Good Grief! is a very odd phrase

Good grief! What an odd phrase. If I weren't sunk in it, I'd research the etymology.

But I am. Sunk. In grief. 

Writing is an effort, but everything is an effort, so, I may as well write about this fleeting phase, since writing is how I typically overcome acute bouts of mental squalor. 

I know from past experience that in two or three days, this dense gravity of grief will dissipate. Until then, air is water. I am swimming.

Our surviving dog, Zarya (or Z) is grieving, too. She didn't come in to wake me up this morning--to my room, where Betsy slept. 

A couple days before, I noticed a hand-sized pouch of fluid in Betsy's abdomen. I noticed blood in her urine.  Betsy was struggling to keep up on our walks. But she would still eat. She was still waking me up early to let her outside to pee. She was still leaping unassisted into the van. 

Three months earlier, ultrasound imaging revealed a cancer in her bladder. The vet said that in a few days or a few weeks, Betsy would no longer be able to pass urine. At that point, things would go downhill fast. We should be prepared to take her to urgent care quickly.

But Betsy lived for another three months as if she hadn't received that memo. She continued to go on walks, eat her kibble; steal, hide, and privately relish Zarya's chew bones. Most importantly, she continued to pee.

Betsy continued to accompany me on my chores and patrol the property. Sometimes, when she seemed a bit slow and oldish, I'd bend down, wrap my arms around her, and kiss her face a bunch of times. As though that were tonic enough to cure what ill'd her, Betsy spring to her feet and prance about, wagging her tail in big happy circles. 

On the morning she didn't wake up before six to go outside to pee, Zarya woke me up instead--earlier than she normally would have. 

Everything was off with Betsy, and Zarya knew it. 

Z seemed nervous and silly, the way children behave when something very grownup and serious is happening that they can't quite understand. 

Betsy managed to get up an hour later and go for a halting walk, during which she seemed to be saying her goodbyes to the snow, sky, trees, dirt, and every familiar smell. She left little round pockets of blood in the snow.

This was what the veterinarian warned me about three months earlier: the rapid decline. I could assume that the next day, New Year's Day, Betsy would neither eat nor perhaps be able to get up at all. 

I thought of the fluid gathered in her now distended abdomen, the bloody urine, the discomfort and pain that Betsy couldn't tell me about.

I thought about what it would mean to take her to Urgent Care during Covid in that predictable moment of crisis. We would have to be socially distant as the vet techs strapped Betsy to a stretcher and took her away from us in the parking lot.  

It should not happen like that.

I called Journey's Home, two compassionate veterinarians who euthanize dying pets at home, making a sad event as low-stress for everybody as possible. 

The vet arrived at noon on December 31, 2020, the last day and, as far as I was concerned, the coup de grace of a seriously lousy year. But of course, I was one of the very lucky ones. For millions of other people, 2020 would do so much worse than see a beloved old dog die from a normal end-of-life disease.

But grief strikes when the iron is hot, whether or not you're in luck.

In grief, I tread water. 

I swim to the barn. I swim through my chores. I swim to the dog park to take Zarya, also grieving, for a swim. 

One nice thing about Betsy being gone, Z and I can take longer, faster walks at the park. So it surprised me this morning when Zarya insisted that we take our usual, truncated route. Z doesn't want any more  change. 

At the park, Z focuses intently on her ball. I kick it, she blocks it. I throw it, she catches it. If any dog threatens to take her it, she growls at the dog. 

That is all Z thinks about until we get back to the car. 

And then Z starts swimming again.

Driving home, the radio is tuned to a series of outtakes from comics. I listen, and sometimes laugh out loud. 

Laughing lifts me out of my grief for about 10 seconds. It's like being temporarily carried aloft on the back of a sea turtle. But soon I slip off the turtle and have to swim on my own.  

Sometimes, to rest, I let myself sink. But I have to breathe, so I must soon pull myself back up all the way to the surface, where a gasp of air feels surprisingly good. For about 10 seconds.

In grief, the mind is not super sharp. For one thing, my oxygen saturation level frequently drops before I remember to breathe again. 

Zarya, treading water beside me in the car, forgets to ask for attention. Remembering how restorative affection was for Betsy, I make a point of stroking Z's chest. At first, she doesn't respond. After a few minutes, she drapes her paw on my arm. 

Z's not supposed to be riding shotgun in the truck, per my husband. Oh, well. 

Something so sad about a dog so sad.  

I would like Zarya to sleep in my room, which had been Betsy's sanctuary. But Betsy taught Zarya not to enter our room except under certain conditions. One of those conditions was that both Betsy and I had to be there. And now, clearly, Betsy was not there. So Z won't come into my room unless I demand it, and then she looks really miserable. So, I put a large stuffed Siberian tiger bought at a yard sale on the big new dog bed that I bought for Z.  

The Siberian tiger is better than nothing. 

I moved around all of the furniture in my room yesterday so I wouldn't have to look at the space in the middle that was Betsy.  

I have three unused perfectly good dog beds. Should I give them to a shelter? I don't want to think about it now. 

How long does a dog grieve?  Will Z wake up in two or three days and feel perfectly alright?

Good grief, time moves awfully slowly when you're swimming.