I learned a lot from my dogs.
Essential lessons, like how AirPods left on the sofa are a delicious treat for a teenage greyhound. That you must cultivate your patience when interacting with a creature who does not speak the same language as you. That we must learn to say goodbye.
This is the first thought that crossed my mind on December 22, 2018, when I entered my home with my current roommate, Rafale, a very mischievous whippet: to say that I am going to have to mourn this creature- there. (Just before running like a chicken, I don’t bother to mop up an unexpected puddle of pee to prevent it from getting stuck in the cracks of my hardwood floor.)
There is probably an element of “professional” distortion in the morbid gaze I cast on my dog, if we can say that it is professional to work as an animal handler in my mother’s veterinary clinic and to skip shifts when I like it (because respecting a boss, when you’re a teenager, is difficult, so imagine when this boss is also your parent). It’s that through less glorious tasks like cleaning rottweiler cages suffering from violent diarrhea, changing the litter of bloodthirsty cats who think they’re panthers, and hauling away pockets of feed that were half of my weight, I welcomed, at the reception, owners in tears who came to accompany their animal when it died by appointment.
I didn’t have a particularly developed emotional intelligence at the time, and it took me a while to understand how to adjust to the decorum that death requires, a process that is still not complete today. .
Dogs are extraordinary: their accelerated lives serve as a rehearsal for the stages of our own lives. Many couples adopt a puppy to test their strength in the face of the arrival of a sometimes unbearable being who will disrupt their lives, and seeing our animals leave us is a painful reminder of what awaits us all – and how to prepare for it. .
I thought it was over, for me, the stories of death by appointment, since I had stopped working for my mother, but at the end of last summer, Pierre, the stepfather of my friend, invited me to her party departure. “Departure”, not in the sense “I’m retiring”, not in the sense “I’m going to experience my mid-life crisis by going to do psychotropic drugs in the Ecuadorian jungle”, departure in the sense “my appointment for “Medical assistance in dying is in three days and I want to experience my Last Supper with you.”
Pierre had been suffering for several years from multiple myeloma, a horrible affair, an incurable, aggressive and painful cancer. It wasn’t a surprise to see him leave and it was actually a relief to know he would do it on his terms, rather than being forced to suffer unfairly, but I also felt competent, at 33 , to go toast with someone who will die three days later, as I was at 14 to welcome a grandmother who came to say goodbye to her last cat: I felt like a dog in a bowling game.
It was a perfect day to welcome death, if such a thing exists, on a mild, cloudless Sunday in September. A friend texted me to ask if I was coming, told me he was hesitant, that it made him uncomfortable to be at party, that he wouldn’t know what to say. I told him that I didn’t have the slightest idea either, and that I would find out on the way. I went by bike to the condo that Pierre shared with his very valiant blonde and caregiver in L’Île-des-Sœurs, hoping to be struck by a flash of genius, but the sky must have been too clear that day, and I arrived empty-handed.
There, we popped the champagne, we had an aperitif while looking at the river, everyone caught up with everyone. A few more tears than normal may have flowed when we made a toast to Pierre, but otherwise, it seemed like any other birthday.
I had to pluck up my courage to go and sit alone with Pierre, because what do we say, exactly, at that moment?
Medical assistance in dying is something new, and the guides on how to behave at a party of departure have not yet been written, and moreover, they had better be written very quickly, because parties like that, I have the impression that there will be more and more.
“What do I wish for you, Pierre?
— It’s a little late to wish me business, he told me. But thanks for coming. »
A moment of hesitation. I’m supposed to be a man of letters, the person who would have the right word, in these moments.
“You, thank you for coming. »
I think I managed to make him laugh. Maybe I’m twisting history to my advantage. I had already had a few glasses of champagne at that point. Alcohol or emotion probably blurred my memory.
Last spring, my mother invited me to come say goodbye to Cyclone, her almost 17-year-old whippet. I couldn’t do anything but hold her for about twenty minutes while crying. It seemed unfair that I couldn’t talk to him. Except that I know what would have happened, if I had actually known how to talk to dogs: I would have sat in front of her and, not knowing what to say, I probably would not have been able to say more than “Thank you for to have come.”