Grieving the Loss of My Dog Enabled Me to Mourn the Loss of My Mother, Too

After years of companionship and joy, my dog’s death enabled me to truly grieve

The last time I saw my mom, I knew she was very sick. She had been fighting breast cancer for over two years, and it was two months past her terminal diagnosis.

Her life had shrunk to her Florida bedroom, which offered a picture-postcard view of a lake brimming with flamingos, turtles, and sometimes — to my mom’s great delight — alligators. It was always a good day when we saw one, cruising along with only its eyes showing above the water. We watched for them. Otherwise, we watched HGTV, my mom smoking and ridiculing the participants’ decor choices.

That final morning, she wasn’t even able to do that. She’d been crying in her sleep, and I’d been sitting on the floor with her black Lab, Smarty, brother to my own black Lab, Woodrow. Smarty hadn’t left the room. He was confused that day, staring at the bed and the unfamiliar noises coming from the tiny little heap that was my mom. Sitting with my arm around him, I felt the same way.

I was scheduled to fly out of West Palm Beach in a couple of hours, taking a week’s break and then returning to help my brother and his girlfriend care for our mom. I didn’t know if I should go. I balanced on the razor edge of indecision. My brother had been doing the hero’s share of the work: liaising with hospice and measuring out my mom’s medications, recording each dosage faithfully by hand in a little notebook.

I’d been sitting with my mom, walking Smarty since she wasn’t able, agreeing when she said, “That wallpaper choice is putrid!” Comparatively, I had it easier, but I’d also been sleeping on an air mattress in the living room and watching my mom dwindle to a ninety-pound woman in a bed she never left. I knew the time away would recharge me. And then, I told myself, I could be of more help.

My mom woke from her moaning sleep. “How are you doing?” I asked.

She shrugged and pressed her side. “Hurts.” The cancer had spread to her stomach, causing pain she’d initially thought was appendicitis. I’d known as soon as she’d mentioned it that it wasn’t.

“I think it’s time for you to take the Oxy,” I said. So far, my mom had resisted opiates, managing her pain with Tylenol.

“But once I start, I won’t be able to go back,” she said.

I got up from the floor and went to sit on the bed. Smarty followed me. “I know, Mama,” I said. We both knew opiates would eclipse and erase her personality. It was a step she wouldn’t reverse. “I think you should take it,” I said. “Pain sucks.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

I got the Oxy, measured out the prescribed dose, and recorded it in my brother’s notebook. She swallowed it, then raised her forearm. “Look.” The ulna and radius were clearly visible beneath the skin. “Soon I’ll be nothing but bones,” she said.

I sat with her, and we looked for alligators while waiting for the painkiller to work. If we’d been a touchy-feely family, I would have petted her, stroked her back or her red wig. When her eyes closed, I kissed her forehead. She smelled like cigarette smoke and Lancôme, as always.

“I have to go now, Mama,” I said. “I’ll be back in a week, okay? I love you.”

Miraculously, she got out of bed to wobble toward the bathroom. “I love you more,” she said and blew me a kiss.

At the Palm Beach airport, in the security line, I started to cry and couldn’t stop. It was embarrassing — there were a lot of people, all considerately ignoring me. I texted my friends, receiving encouraging Bitmojis and reminders to hydrate in return. It didn’t work. I couldn’t stop sobbing.

Until I was through the security gates. Then my tears stopped as if somebody had thrown a switch. On, boom, off. I called my best friend. “I said bye to Fran,” I said. That was my mom’s name.

“That’s hard, Puppet,” she said. “But you’ll see her in a week, right?”

Some part of me, some animal part, must have known that wasn’t true. My mom died five days later while I was in Minnesota. My brother and his girlfriend were with my mom, and they held an iPad up to her face so I could talk her through her final breaths. During those two hours, I recalled every favorite memory we had and told her all the things that would remind me of her every time I encountered them: cardinals, Rachmaninoff, our favorite field outside her Minnesota hometown. When she passed, it was so quiet my brother had to tell me she was gone.

It was the hardest work I had ever done. And the most valuable.

I went back to Florida. I packed her clothes. I notified her friends. My brother and I went to the beach and bobbed around in the waves together quietly. I went home. I went on a book tour. At one event I sat next to a psychologist and mentioned my mom’s passing. She looked at me with surprise and compassion. “Only two months ago?” she said. “You’re still in shock.”

Was I? Maybe. My mom hadn’t wanted a memorial so I hadn’t had the traditional chance to mourn. But I hadn’t cried much after that initial spasm, not the way I had after my dad had passed. I just felt — confused. Like Bambi after the forest fire. Where was my mom? People said, “She’s still with you.” But she wasn’t. She was gone. It was a vacuum.

A few months later, my old black Lab, Woodrow, then fourteen, was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. His cardiologist said I’d soon have to make that difficult decision to put Woodrow down. I balked. I could not lose my old dog and my mom.

I had loved my mom so much. As adults, we were sidekicks — Thelma and Louise (I was always Louise). We’d also fought, as mothers and daughters do. A lot. She disapproved of my choice in men. With the exception of my dad, I disapproved of hers. I thought she was a spendthrift; she thought I was a tightwad. I thought she was imprudent; she thought I was a prude. We loved each other fiercely; nobody made me laugh more. And she was completely maddening.

Woodrow, meanwhile, was my pal, rhythm, and daily joy. I was a writer who worked and lived, at that point, alone, and Woodrow provided my structure. He needed to go out? We walked. Dog parents were my most immediate community. When I woke, Woodrow loomed above me like Mt. Rushmore, covering my face in stinky old dog breath. Mommoo. Something is very amiss. The dog is starving.

When I said, “Good morning, Woodrow,” his jaw dropped in a canine grin. I am awake, and you are awake, and it is a good day. I talked to my mom once a week and we exchanged texts, hers peppered with weird and vaguely threatening emojis. Woodrow was my comfort.

Woodrow’s cardiologist was wrong: he lived another seven months, shored up by the love and support of our friends, neighbors, and kind strangers. But when he died, the grief I had feared came for me. I was unhinged. I could not stop crying, even though it gave me a migraine.

I wept on my couch, watched over by my friends, and cried in my sleep while I dreamed of Woodrow — where was he? What dimension was he in? Was he scared without me? When I woke still crying, head throbbing, and nauseous, my friends Kate and Kirsten looked down at me. “Do we need to take her to the ER?” I heard Kate say.

I cried on and off for months. Anything could trigger it: pet food commercials, other dogs, and — especially — kindness. But the crying helped. It washed me clean. It was a natural sedative, after which I felt peaceful and tired.

What is it about dogs? Why is their love and devotion so precious to us? No matter what we do, the dogs are there. They follow our every move, hoping for food, yes, but also just to be with us. And dogs don’t talk. They may be stinky or ill-behaved, but they’re uncomplicated. Their love is pure. When we have to let them go, when we have to help them, our loss is pure as well.

Grief comes in many forms. My dad, my mom, Woodrow — each was its own animal. Woodrow, in his departure, gave me a final gift to complement the love, laughter, silliness, and companionship he’d provided for fifteen years. He enabled me to truly grieve.

Jenna Blum is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of novels Those Who Save Us, The Stormchasers, and The Lost Family; the novella “The Lucky One” in the collection Grand Central; and memoir Woodrow on the Bench, about her senior black Lab and what his last seven months taught her, available from Harper/Harper Collins on November 9, 2021.

Jenna is one of Oprah’s Top Thirty Women Writers, with her work published in over 20 countries, and co-founder/CEO of literary social media marketing company A Mighty Blaze. Jenna’s New York Times and internationally bestselling first novel, Those Who Save Us, won the Ribalow Prize, awarded by Hadassah Magazine and adjudged by Elie Wiesel; Jenna interviewed Holocaust survivors for the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Foundation for five years. Jenna is a public speaker, traveling nationally and internationally; for her 1st novel, she visited over 800 book clubs in the Boston area alone.

Jenna is based in Boston, teaching at Grub Street Writers, where she has been running master fiction and novel workshops for over 20 years. She earned her M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and was the fiction editor for AGNI Literary Magazine. For more information about Jenna and to share her real-time adventures, please follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

This essay is part of our Moms Don’t Have Time to Grieve column.