Marking the One-Year Anniversary of Pettigrew’s Death

It’s been a year since our beloved Pettigrew died. He was a mutt by parentage, but a prince in bearing and personality. After an unfortunate encounter with a mail truck, he survived for a week, even rallied, before succumbing to his injuries.

At the time of his death, I had been blogging regularly for years, drawing inspiration from his antics and loving personality. He was, to put it simply, my muse. To process the loss, I wrote several blogs, but was unable to post any. Now, a year later, I’m sharing two of them. I’m not saying goodbye to Pettigrew, I don’t think I ever really can or even want to, I’m just marking this anniversary and year of transition.

The weather was perfect the week Pettigrew died.

The weather was perfect the week Pettigrew died. Beautiful sunny days. Temperatures in the 50s and low 60s. Pettigrew drank it all in. He went outside at 7 in the morning and didn’t come inside until I called him at 8:30 at night.

I still look where I step when I get out of bed at night; afraid to accidentally bump into his black body, hidden in the darkness of my bedroom.

I can hear the click of his claws on the hardwood floors. See his grizzled muzzle as he lifts it to peer at me through milk chocolate brown eyes as I lie, warm and half asleep, in bed. He’s come to remind me that it’s time to get up for our morning walk.

Who’s taking whom for a walk? It’s a question I’ve long pondered, but now I know as I tread solo or with an obliging friend along the routes he mapped throughout the neighborhood. We cross the street where he liked to cross, turn where he turned, paying tribute to our fallen friend. He knew I needed to get out every day and by refusing to relieve himself in our back yard, he made sure I did.

I can feel his silky soft fur gliding under my fingers. The fur on the top of his head grew especially thickly and felt like velvet. I never tired of rubbing it.

Pettigrew liked to sit under the dining room table while we were eating dinner. In fact, he would position himself right where you wanted to put your feet so that you had to keep your chair pulled out a bit further than expected and be careful, when you got up, not to push your chair all the way in. I find myself starting to check before I push my chair in, but of course, he’s not there.

After dinner he would invite me down on the floor where he would sit, then lie, then finally keel over with a relaxed thud as he surrendered himself body and mind to relaxation and being thoroughly rubbed. A pile of fur, loosened by my stroking fingers, would grow beside us.

Pettigrew was intentional. He didn’t follow our lead. He led. He determined when he wanted to hang out and when he wanted private time. How much brushing or petting before he went off by himself. If we were going on a hike, he would position himself in the center of the preparations, a clear signal that there would be hell to pay if we so much as thought about leaving him behind.

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Letting Go

Death is the ultimate act of letting go.

When we know or suspect death is coming do we ease into it by starting to loosen the ties that bind us to others? Or is this a personal preference?

When Pettigrew was dying, I would’ve stayed with him every minute of every day. I slept on the living room couch to be close, available if he needed anything. After that first night when we shared the room, he decamped to the dining room for his evening slumber. I was de trop: too much. In the way.

He spent as much of his time outside as possible. In the morning when I came downstairs, he would get up and head for the back door. He only reentered the house at bedtime. Seemingly, he would’ve stayed outside all night if I had let him.

He didn’t haunt his usual spots in the yard: the cozy sliver of ground between the maple tree and the hostas. The expanse of lawn in full sun. Instead, he gravitated toward the shade. Curling up in the mulched flowerbed next to the garage. Sneaking around the corner of the house, just out of sight, on the cool grass that was damp with the nighttime dew. Hidden. Tucked away. On his own.

During his last week, Pettigrew gravitated to the shade, staying out late at night.

When he’d come in, I’d find bits of brown mulch clinging to his fur.

A former work colleague and mentor retired and several years later suffered a stroke. At first when she was hospitalized, her son answered her emails and texts on her behalf, but as she recovered, he stopped filling in for her and she never responded on her own.

Did she and Pettigrew just want to be left alone?

Did they, in fact, feel more freedom in a world with fewer people, fewer distractions? Interacting with me and others would they have had to confront how much they had changed, how much they could no longer navigate with ease? As we age, do we consciously or unconsciously shrink our worlds to ones in which we can feel successful, competent?

This may seem to be an odd analogy, but I think about how my experience of eating out has changed over the years. As someone with a number of food restrictions, restaurants often force me to confront my limited choices. At home, in an environment I control, I eat whatever I want. But in a restaurant, I am faced with the stark reality of the many ways my body has changed, the foods I no longer tolerate; the ways I am different from others. Of course, I do eat out because there are other reasons to do so that have nothing to do with food, but it is not the same experience I had when I was younger and my body was more forgiving.

Or does it have nothing to do with coming face to face with the changes aging brings? Perhaps, Pettigrew and my colleague were turning inward, curling into themselves.

Is the transition to dying something we need to do alone, and are the needs, desires, and demands of others not a comfort, but merely a distraction as we prepare for this most intimate of steps? One we must take ourselves.

Looking back on that week and its tragic ending, Pettigrew’s final gift of love was to make room for us on his journey toward death. He didn’t push us away, but nor do I believe he needed us. It was we who needed to be with him.