Meg

I’m not sure who I’m writing this for and I don’t even know where to start.

Depending on how well you know me, you know about Blackie — my childhood dog that got me through the first five silent years of my life.

But if you know me at all, you know about Meg (otherwise known as Megan, Meghan, Meagan or Maegan). That she learned how to open the door and took to letting herself outside to sleep in the driveway, no matter how hot or cold it was (doing it so often that if you find our house on Google Maps, you can see Meg in her spot on the tar). That I used to take her to work with me at Maine and she would just wander in and out of offices, not leaving until people pet her. That I have hundreds of other stories about her. That her tail literally never stopped wagging, until her heart stopped beating.

I’ve never cried when a human died. Not when my grandfathers died, nor my uncle. I’ve carried the casket of a former teammate and didn’t shed a tear. Because those deaths I could process.

But Meg? I can’t. It happened so fast, so unexpectedly.

She was the most happy, loving dog that did everything she could to please her family in the seven short years that she was alive. Usually, that involved the constant wag of her tail, no matter how sick or tired or lazy she was feeling.

November 20, 2018 began with an innocent text from my mom that Meggie was feeling sick. Per usual, I asked for — and was provided with — hourly updates. But by 6 p.m. I had grown worried. As the third period of my game began, I knew that I was going to be going home after I was finished at work. My poopie was sick and she needed me. I left straight from the rink and drove home, getting in around 3 a.m. By 6 a.m. my dad and I were headed to the emergency vet where he’d had to leave her for the night.

I heard the familiar jingle of her collar. A technician led her out from around the counter and I saw her. I got up from the wooden bench and walked over, wanting to hug her tight but afraid to touch her at the same time. My Meggie didn’t cry her normal happy cry that she did whenever she saw me but her tail slowly inched back and forth.

The 45 minutes I was able to spend with her that day were simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming.

I hadn’t even planned on going home for Thanksgiving but there I was Thursday morning, spending the most precious hour on the floor of the examination room with Meggie. Her face was swollen but she had perked up just a bit thanks to the drugs and we returned to the pattern of me saying her name and getting a *wag*wag*wag*.

But the next morning — seven years to the day from when I had first met her, when I came home from school and walked in the door and a little black puppy peed on the living room floor out of excitement — we got the news we’d been wishing so hard against.

We could do it right then or we could wait. We could take her home for the day to say goodbye and see what happened. For once, I was an adult. I spoke up. It was unchartered territory for me, but I spoke up.

“I want her to see Gus and Annie. I want to be able to say goodbye.”

So we took her home for the final 10 hours of her life.

We spent the day exactly how we’d spent hundreds of days before. We slept on the dog beds (normally, she would sleep on my bed and I would sleep on the floor on her dog bed but she wasn’t exactly in any condition to get up there now). Gus and Annie took turns coming over to their baby sister to sniff her, keenly aware that something was wrong.

For the first time in my life, I saw my father cry. “Oh Meg.”

*wag*wag*wag*

I had a game on Saturday that I needed to prepare for so, as I’d done countless times in the 10 months that I lived at home and worked at Maine, I sat on the floor with her and my laptop and did my work.

It became an agonizing game of looking at the clock and calculating how much time we had left with her, how many more times I would hear her snore, how many more times I could say her name and see her tail wag. I kept wondering to myself if she knew. If she knew that in six hours…five hours…four hours…she’d be dead. She wasn’t the same Meg but she sure was trying to be.

*wag*wag*wag*

My dad and I took her and Gus outside for a final walk. He and Gus went up the trail and, as she always had, Meg stopped at the beginning and just sat there — uninterested in exerting any energy. I walked over and sat down in the snow next to her. Eventually, I got her to slowly walk back inside — tail swaying as she walked — only to have her heartbreakingly go through her usual routine of walking over to our big picture windows and looking out across the fields. I went over and sat with her, not wanting her to be alone. Did she know?

“Hi pretty girl!”

*wag*wag*wag*

She slowly began to fade. She took up a spot on the floor and we covered her in blankets and laid with her as her breathing started to slow. I turned off my phone, not wanting to spend her final hour painfully watching the time tick by.

When it was finally time to go, my dad picked her up and carried her to the car. She and I got in the back seat and I held her head in my lap for the 15-minute drive to the animal hospital, kissing the top of her head between my tears.

*wag*wag*wag*

She slid out of the car and under her own power and slowly wobbled into the clinic. In one of the examination rooms I could see a blanket folded on the floor. I knew it was for Meg. One of the technicians come out from behind the counter to bring us back.

*wag*wag*wag*

The vet that had seen her when she first arrived wasn’t even supposed to be working Friday night but she had come back in just to be the one — that’s how loveable my little poopie was and how quickly she had endeared herself to the staff. She entered the room with a couple of syringes in her hand.

*wag*wag*wag*

The vet took one of the needles and cleaned out the catheter in front right leg. She took a second needle and tried to start the process but Meg pulled her paw away.

For the first time in her life, she looked sad. Helpless. I wanted to scream and tell the vet to stop but I couldn’t. I just continued to hold Meg’s paw and stroke her head, just trying to make sure she didn’t feel alone.

She looked up at me and started licking my hand.

*wag*wag*wag*

Ten seconds later — ten seconds after she had seemingly tried to make me feel better by licking my hand — her eyes slowly shut. Her paw became lifeless in my right hand.

For the first time in seven years, her tail stopped moving.

I collapsed into my father, sobbing. I saw the vet lean down and kiss her. My mom was still on the floor with a hand on her tiny little ribs.

I stared at her lifeless but peaceful body. After a minute or so, I gave her head one more kiss and began to make my way out of the room. My parents lingered and gave their thanks to the vet for everything she had done. She gave each of them a hug.

I walked outside into the cold Maine winter and over to my dad’s car. It was a silent drive back to the house, with all three of us — me, my mom and my dad — intermittently breaking the silence with muffled cries.

When we got home, I walked back in to grab my bag and to give Gus and Annie a kiss before I drove back to Boston. I said goodbye to my parents, knowing it would be easier for me than them. I wouldn’t have to wake up every day and see how lost Gus was without his best friend or see the living room window where once every morning and once every afternoon you could find her staring out at her kingdom. I wouldn’t have to walk down the hallway to the bathroom in the middle of the night, expecting to hear the thump, thump, thump of her tail only to be hit with a deafening silence.

I walked to my car in the darkness and placed the collar of the most loving, pleasing and happy dog on the passenger seat trying somehow to fill the hole within me that had opened just 30 minutes before.