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I Witnessed Death, and I Feel Fine
Death is fine, fine, fine
I drove home to help my mother move out of the home I grew up in.
She informed me that her little dog (Yorkie) could no longer walk well enough to relieve herself. She was 18.
My brother and I took her to the vet to be put to sleep. We stayed with her until the end. We cried a lot, despite it not being our dog.
It’s unbelievably strange to watch something pass on. To go from animated to lifeless. What exactly leaves the little body? Nothing with any weight. A process.
We’re more like a whirlpool than any of the water that makes it up.
At any rate — despite being immaterial, it’s real. And it leaves us all, eventually. It’s impossible to look at the dying dog and not think, “That’ll be me one day.” Death is a powerful reminder that we are have not transcended our ape-bodies — despite our iPhones.
On the way home, my brother mentioned feeling guilty. “It’s a lot to choose to take a life.”
“We feel the guilt, so Mom doesn’t have to. Thank God we could be here.”
Honestly, I was grateful to have witnessed it. Unfortunately, seeing death is basically illegal these days. I wasn’t allowed to see my brother until they had filled him with…
