In the last month or two of Casey Rue’s life, I sliced roast as thin as I could for her. I thought, Surely she’ll eat this.
Casey, if she could talk, would’ve said, No, thank you, Mom. I’ll stick with the salad.
And I mean a salad from Verde. She liked watermelon, too. A lot of watermelon. A little cantaloupe. Potatoes? Hard pass.
My dog was turning down roast for lettuce, and even in the middle of losing her, I could still laugh at how very Casey that was.
When you’re caring for an animal who’s sick, you can spend a surprising amount of your day thinking about one bite. What did she eat yesterday? Would she eat it again today?
You make the roast. You cut the watermelon. You keep trying because there’s something you can do with your hands, and thank God for that. There’s only so much you can do with all that love.
What I could give her
There were medicines and fluids and changes to her food. I could do those things. I could learn how, work them into the day, and get up the next morning and do them again. There was a kind of comfort in having a job. I could be Casey’s mom at the exact moment I felt least equipped to be Casey’s mom.
And then there was the part I couldn’t do anything about. I was already grieving her while she was still here. That’s what I mean when I talk about conscious grieving. I was beginning to understand what I was going to lose while I could still sit beside her.
Sometimes that meant I could be very present with her. Sometimes it meant I was already somewhere in the future, imagining my life without her, while the actual dog was right there and would probably have liked another piece of watermelon.
I think about how much I wanted to understand what she was going through. I still wonder, in the way I wonder about God and spirit and where we go, whether some part of Casey was already turning toward home. I can wonder about that and still remember what I could see.
She was tired. Her appetite had changed. And every once in a while, I offered her something she wanted, and we got to enjoy that little yes.
What she gave me
I think of Casey and I think of Maxwell House. I know. Of all the things I could say about the great love of my life, I land on a coffee commercial.
Good to the last drop.
But that was Casey. She held on to the last drop. I felt so safe with her that I could almost imagine her pouring from her cup for me right up until the end. In my mind, she would’ve kept pouring. And if I’m honest, there was a part of me that would’ve kept holding out my cup.
That’s hard to admit because by then I was the one giving the fluids, figuring out the food, and trying to keep her comfortable. On paper, I was taking care of her.
But I knew how much I depended on the sound of her moving around the house, on having her there when I got home, on being able to reach down and touch her. I depended on all those ordinary things so completely that I could hardly picture a day without them.
When I think about saying goodbye, I come back to what I needed to tell her, and what I needed to hear myself say.
Girl, I can finally let you go.
I still wanted more time. Of course I did. I think I finally felt strong enough to say it because I could see how much strength I’d already gotten from loving her. She’d spent years making the world feel like a place I could come home to. Now I had to trust I could carry a little of that feeling into the house myself.
I can still picture the thinly sliced roast and how sure I was that I’d finally figured out what she wanted. And I can picture Casey, who had a perfectly good opinion of her own, going for the watermelon. I’m glad I got to be there for that, too. She was still my girl, with her own tastes and her own little ways, all the way to the last drop.
