Goodbye

The first thing Elsa taught us is that it is okay to be very sad, for as long as you need, when someone you love dies.¹

From her vet and rescue records we were able to piece together that Elsa had lived with a woman named Barbara who died in 2020, two days after Elsa’s intake.²

For a long time Elsa was focused on three things: finding food, asking us to stay close to her, and running to older women — across the parking lot, sitting on a porch three houses away, walking in the distance at the beach.

me adoring Elsa, back in 2021

She lived with grief, and did not rush out of it. But still, her life grew larger around it: after two months she started to show us her iconic hop, and six months later she let us in on the secret that she had kind of known what “sit” meant all along. And a year later, when baby Miko came home, Elsa surprised us all by coming out of retirement and starting to play again.

Elsa had a marvelous hop and she made a lifestyle out of running toward Danielle.

And so she just kept teaching us: how to ask for what you need, how to tell other people when you’re lonely, how trust again when you honestly thought you never would.

Over time we began to suspect that Elsa was quite a bit older than the rescue had estimated. Our last few months have paced around hers: slowing, slowing. She was declining and in more and more pain. It broke our hearts that eventually the only thing left we could do to help her was to let her go.

We made an appointment for a vet to come to our home to put her down during her afternoon nap the following Thursday. And so for three days we waited with her, up every couple of hours all night, soft naps during the day.

Miko figured out early on how to do what Danielle and I never quite could: calm Elsa’s panic attacks. Miko would gently crawl on top of Elsa and use her flexible little body for just the right amount of deep pressure and Elsa would soften until she slept. Miko did this often to comfort Elsa in her last week here.

I wanted a gentle way to be with her, to take her in without waking her up. So drawing was the gift: a way to love her.³

elsa, four paws meeting her nose, sleeping so deep it seemed she was practicing dying.

I could feel time going by as the paint dried. We had a set number of hours left with her, and they were happening now, and now. But in the meantime there was an entire afternoon to sit on the floor and listen to her breathe. This kind of suspended moment is perfect for art, which also takes an instant and stretches it out, while marking a moment in time that never returns: the ink dries, the page is dated, the page is turned.

Thursday came. The vet arrived at 3pm, we sat together on the floor with photos and paintings of Elsa. I just remember ache and crying, but somehow the photo mostly picked up love.

The vet took this while we were preparing to say goodbye. Elsa was feeling peaceful since she could smell Danielle’s hand — she had never seemed to recognize her own name, or any of ours, but we joked that she called Danielle ‘Barbara Jr’ since they bonded so quick and deep.

Miko laid close to Elsa, kissing her face. After she passed, and Miko tried to wake her up and couldn’t, she put her paw on Elsa’s, and laid her head down so their noses were just touching. I was worried Miko wouldn’t understand the idea of death, but in the end, it was me who, despite all these years of practice, still can’t wrap my mind around it.

“Forever,” 2024

Mary Oliver wrote,

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Each time I have encountered this juncture, I have found it to be nearly impossible. But Elsa taught us how to string together the parts of us that want to fly apart – loving less in the first place, and not needing that love in such a serious way, and holding on to it forever. She showed us how to do what the poet says we must be able to do. To learn to love this life, even in its briefness.

love,
Brit

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1. This is Danielle’s observation, which she told me while she was carrying Elsa on our last walk together, and I promptly burst into tears on the sidewalk.

2. The printout from that visit has her basic details and a hand written note: "extremely anxious. weird tooth.”

3. Wendy MacNaughton says that drawing is a way of looking, and that looking is loving. It makes sense — what is being in love, but noticing someone's every detail and adoring it?