It’s always the same. When you are dealing with loss. It hits you like a wall. You have your knee-jerk reaction…denial, confusion, doubt, silence. Then it settles in and tells you just exactly what you will lose. You look in her eyes in your head and feel awful. You will think about being helpless. Life stops you. Life cripples you. You watch the ones you love rot from the inside out. Their body betrays them. Everything you take for granted. Everything you hold dear. You have to let go. There is nothing that hurts more than losing the ones you love. Again, and again, you watch it happen and the only thing you can distill from each painful loss is one cold fact…its just a matter of time before it happens to you.
What’s the only thing worse than watching those you love die?
The only thing I can think of is dying yourself. I don’t know why I am writing
this and I don’t know how it could possibly help. It’s making me cry. I guess
that’s cathartic. I love Pepper because she is the dog I thought I would never
have. I rescued her from Florida when my brother royally fucked up his life. My
uncles told me to take whatever I could carry. I looked at her. I looked at all
the stuff my brother had of my deceased father. At the time, it was an easy
decision. I grabbed Pepper and her cage and left everything else behind.
John and Pepper loved each other. They were in perfect
harmony. She would sit in the kitchen while he cooked, right under his legs,
and never once get stepped on. How could I not keep his spirit alive in our
family by bringing her back north to my mother? She was a little black and
white peanut that I came to love. During my worst times, dropping out of
college, running away from home, dealing with the loss of my father, I spent
that time in Florida with Pepper and John. She was my rescue dog.
She bonded with Hunter, even after a rocky start. They
became the ultimate pair. The purebred and the mut. A champion breed yellow American
Labrador retriever and some kind of crossbreed between Pitbull, chocolate Labrador,
emperor penguin, 1.2% werewolf nose, nobody knows where Pepper came from. All
we know is she was a Johnson; she was part of the family. We were keeping her preserved
for John’s return. And now this.
Not two months after we had to let Hunter go, we find out Pepper
is dying. It hurts. Hunter, I knew was coming. I felt good about giving him his
best life. My mom wanted to put him to rest too soon and I fought to prolong
it. It wasn’t until the day he couldn’t get himself up that we put him down.
His body had failed him, but his spirit was still all there and that crushed me
the most. Now here we are. And I actually let life remind me it could be worse.
Me of all people. How do you prepare for worse besides falling back into
enjoyable ignorance? Still, I feel like as much as I love my dogs, this is all
just training for the real deal. I’m only one person and I have vastly
different perspectives on Pepper dying.
I had to call the vet to hear it for myself. Her body has
stopped absorbing protein from the food she eats. She will starve to death in a
matter of weeks and there is nothing we can do. All he could say to me was autopsy
reports usually reveal lymphoma…intestinal cancer. What does it mean that this is
happening right after Hunter? We barely came up for air. Pepper was supposed to
get my mom through the loss of Hunter. Good thing there is Jynx. Always have a contingency
for your contingency, I guess. The only thing is Jynx loves Pepper.
Who knew a black cat could bond so well with a tuxedo dog?
Maybe he thinks he is whatever Pepper is. It doesn’t matter, the only thing
Jynx loves more than my mom is Pepper. My mom will go from 3 pets to 1 in a
matter of 3 months. That one surviving pet will most likely be forever changed
by the passing of the dogs, or not, you never know. Cats are weird. We will get
through this because we are as strong as they come. You don’t make it through
my mother’s life without building strength from loss. At this point, it’s the Johnson
way.
I opened this word document to start a chapter in my novel
in a creative way after finding out about Pepper today. Now I realize I just
needed to get this out. I think, in conclusion, that this is in effigy of Pepper.
She was a phenomenal pet and a criminally misunderstood dog. So, I’ll spend a
little more time talking about her instead of myself. Pepper thrived in her
innocence as a puppy.
She would watch the kids get home from school in the front yard,
free of any leash. John would let her go into the Florida everglades unleashed
to do her business and she always came back. The little black peanut never got
caught in a gator’s snare. When John did what he did she was locked in that
house for a day or two, alone, afraid. By the time we got to her with the help
of the police, her voice was gone. She knew me. They let me into the house
first and she came right to me. There was no way I would let her go.
Her time in Pennsylvania could be called controversial. She
became extremely anxious after the Florida incident. Pepper became very afraid
and territorial. She was too aggressive for the dog park and got herself banned
for life. She literally snapped her lead outside because a neighbor’s dog
stepped on our property. The neighbor got in the way of Pepper attacking the
dog and my mom had to pay for her stiches. We learned the hard way that Pepper
is not to be trifled with.
Pepper spent all her time pacing back and forth throughout the
house. No noise gone unchecked; no smell un-sniffed. I’ve spent a lot of time
thinking about her newfound neuroses. It all stems back to Florida and losing
John. Her whole world was shattered. Dogs have shit memory so who knows how
much she retained from the event? What she took with her were mannerisms, behavior.
She could not afford to lose the people she loved again, that was my mom, that
was me, and that was Hunter. I called her Sergeant Pepper because she was
always on guard and it was clever.
She was the protector of the house and my pride and joy. I
could leave my mother in Pennsylvania and try to recapture my life in New York
without feeling like she was vulnerable. No robber would ever try to mess with
her while she had Hunter and Pepper to protect her. Hunter the glorious blonde
lazy bum, the powerhouse. Pepper, the watcher, the little guardian of the
house. Together they were unstoppable, yin and yang. Me and Pepper would wrestle
Hunter. I fondly thought of it as training. I would grapple with the big boy while
Pepper ran circles around him and nipped at his ankles. We worked in tandem.
I would even test their allegiances within the family.
Pepper would not have it, me fake hitting my mom. I wouldn’t get away with one
air strike with her. Hunter on the other hand, would look at me with mild
confusion before mustering the courage to bark at me in defiance. Pepper had no
such confliction. Pepper was unyielding, incorrigible. If I didn’t cut that
shit out, she would straight up bite me. I feared Pepper. I never feared Hunter
and he was twice her size.
It crushes me that this is happening to her. She lived a
full life. It was just cut too soon. I guess its fitting that Hunter and Pepper
go out together. I just worry about my mom. She is not as strong as I am. I can
make the mental leap that losing two dogs is still nowhere near > losing my
father. This is all just death-training. I love Pepper like a member of the family,
but I know true loss, and I can make the distinction. Some people have no sense
of propriety and that pisses me off. Pepper meant everything to me and it
breaks my heart that I can’t help her. In the end, she was one of the coolest,
loyal, and loving dogs I could ever ask for. The bottom line is, no matter how
much this hurts, and let me tell you, it fucking hurts, I would never give up
my time with her to save myself from the sadness of losing her early. There is
something to that sentiment. I just haven’t figured it out yet.
