Four months have passed since you’ve died, Tank, and I promise that I’ve not gotten much wiser since, so maybe you haven’t missed much. Most days I’m still in disbelief that you’re gone, and I’m unsure what to do with that disbelief. Do I shove it away in the wooden box inside the blue velvet bag where your ashes lie? Do I wait it out like it’s heartburn set to fade away after a Tum? Or do I do nothing about it like the air bag sensor light on my old Toyota Camry, ensuring that I’m the only one in harm’s way:
“Don’t worry, it’s just my air bag,” I told my then-boyfriend after another one of the terrible jokes at my car’s expense. “You still have one though.”
“That’s not good, Marí,” he replied back in all seriousness.
“It hasn’t let me down yet.”
What made me finally give up on my Toyota was a car accident I wasn’t even a part of and a $2,000 minimum price tag to repair it. Despite the bad accident, she still turned on when my dad and I arrived at the towing lot to retrieve the remaining possessions. Despite her problems—and she had many ranging from the air bag sensor to the brakes to the weird noises I’d often ignore—she was always there … and at least she had a sunroof.
I wish your death had been like my Toyota who I cried over for months after the accident; the car who represented me straying away from the shelter and safety my parents tried to keep me bubble wrapped in … the car that played an integral in my experience with first love … the car that represented adventures and way-past-midnight laughs. My car’s death was theoretical … a death to me because she was no longer in my possession after we signed the title away to the towman. A death in my dramatic antics but who I can imagine still roaming the streets today, likely in better shape than me despite the 174,000+ miles she had put in at the time of her death.
I wish your death had been theoretical—a death to me because you were no longer home but who I could imagine roaming the roads of Chicago, wondering whether it was you when I saw a semi-distinguishable but common mark in German Shepherds. Common enough that for a moment I could pretend it’s you, just like the sunroof.
Your death wasn’t theoretical though, as your walking-like-a-drunk man strides turned into me being the one to care for you as you slowly became paralyzed from something we will never know. That Tuesday morning when you threw up on my shoes, I told mom you were going to die that day (you did). You died the same day my brother (your human) had taken you to the vet and was told you had some neurological condition; you died the same day my brother told us you would be put down on Saturday. And unlike the closure of the car crash and the realization that the driver-side airbag actually functioned, I’ll never get the peace—or denial—of knowing that maybe you’re out there, looking damaged but alive with somebody else taking the lead.
Four months have passed since you’ve been gone, and I’m not sure I’ve gotten much wiser since. Sometimes, I’ll still find pieces of your hair around my bedroom despite moving, and the bedroom I know is no longer the room or home you knew. I’ve been keeping a little ziplock bag of them along with your blanket. I know the moment I find the last one will feel like losing you all over again, because all traces of you will be confined to that velvet bag with your ashes and the tiny bag of hair the vets took from your lifeless body. They—the ziplocks of hair—are different; the ones I’ve collected show the memories of you being alive, the memories I want to remember anytime the memories of your tragic death come to mind—your slow-then-fast deterioration from (we assume) a fall and the loss of your vivid personality in those endless two-and-a-half days.
Grieving you is weird because some days I don’t think about you, not because it hurts too much to think about you but because you’re not there anymore to remember. Then, I feel guilty that I forgot you existed—because maybe that means that eventually I’ll go weeks or months without thinking about you, like I didn’t grow up with you for all of my adult life, like you weren’t my little brother (who so happened to be a dog).
I always said I was your least favorite family member, even in the beginning. My brother walked in with you one November day during my last year of high school, and I was absolutely smitten with you, which is likely why you weren’t so fond of me. We hadn’t had a dog in several years at that point, and you were the cutest and smallest little thing. Your reproach to the stairs were nothing to the howls you’d give me whenever I’d annoy you too much. I’d go into my brother’s room whenever he wasn’t home just to get to talk to you for a little while, which the camera roll full of badly filtered photos I found after your death can prove. You’d look at me from your crate with curiosity at that point—assessing me—before beginning to bark at the stranger in your space. I’d like to say that it stopped in the puppy phase, but the poorly filtered camera roll shows you in your young teenage angst—with your no longer down ears and weirdly textured tail (glad to know even dogs go through weird teenage haircuts). Despite that, I loved you so much.
The night you died, my brother carried your lifeless body out the same doors where we had once met the shy puppy who’d wreak havoc every single day. You left the house a hundred pounds heavier and with the four tongues of the people whose lives you changed.
Maria Luisa Dorado is a former DePaul Writing Center tutor and has edited a variety of genres in her career—from creative writing to academic essays to draft emails. Her most recent editorial publication was Issue 16 of DePaul’s LAS Journal, Creating Knowledge. Currently, Maria works at her other alma mater; she assists students navigating the college setting and provides them supplemental support for improving in writing. Maria hopes to continue writing and contributing to more editorial projects in the future!