Do dogs go to heaven? Strange question, I know. But my dog just died and it's been driving me insane. Do dogs have souls? Or any animal, for that matter?
I didn't cry when she got sick. I wasn't sad when she lost control of her bladder. Or when she stopped being able to walk. I wasn't sad the last night we spent with her, hearing her labored breath and feeble whines. I wasn't sad. I didn't feel anything. And I hated myself for it. I felt numb. Like it was a filler episode in a show with a thousand episodes.
I thought 'maybe this is latent psychopathy.' Maybe I faked my emotions up until now and just didn't realize it. But when the vet knocked on our door and sat down next to her. And my mom knelt down, cradling her face to soothe her and let her know she was safe and not alone, I almost broke down on the spot. Up until that moment, I had felt nothing. And then I felt everything. I was fighting back the tears as the vet injected her with an anesthetic to put her to sleep, and gave her the lethal dose. I couldn't let my mom see me cry. But after the vet left and we carried her body out back to be buried next to Lola, I walked off on my own and broke down sobbing.
I couldn't understand it. Why now? Why not while she was suffering? Is it the absence of her presence? Maybe I was so normalized to her being around I couldn't comprehend her leaving. But that would also make me a bad person, for caring merely about my own well-being rather than hers.
I suppose I ran from the truth. I convinced myself that it was illusory. That she would be better in the morning and the vet would never come and she'd go right back to sitting on my lap while I played games on my laptop in the living room. Maybe she'd bark at the fedex driver as he dropped off a package and I'd get annoyed and tell her to knock it off because I couldn't hear the game. But I guess you don't really know how much something is worth to you until it's gone.
And I guess I'm probably a bad person.