The Absence of His Presence: Goodbye Freckles

Our dog died yesterday. We think Freckles was nine or ten years old. Some of his history is unknown to us so we deduced his age based on what we do know and the vet’s best guess. We also don’t know Freckles’ breed, but we think he was part Shih Tzu for sure. Based on the length of his torso and the shortness of his legs, he also might have had some Dachshund in his DNA.

Whatever he was, he was amazing. He didn’t bark (except at the mailman). He didn’t shed. He only whined around food. He napped constantly — wherever, whenever around the house, snoring loudly as if sending our household the constant, subtle message to just slow down, calm down, and chill out.

Sometimes Freckles’ would send a more direct message — coming directly to where one of his humans was sitting, settling in to nap along side them. He often sat right next to me on my meditation pillow or snuggled his bottom right beside my head when I lay on my yoga mat.

Every night he excitedly climbed the stairs for bed as if he were going on an doggy adventure. He’d march down the hall clicking his nails on the wood floor until he reached our room where he’d burrow into the blankets in his crate and start snoring again.

Freckles was also obese. When we got him three years ago we started on an immediate campaign to help him lose weight. We exercised him, revised his diet, tailoring his portions down to the exact quarter ounce. His only treats were raw foods — his favorites were carrots, cucumbers and red peppers.

Because of his history of obesity, the vet told us, Freckles’ had a bad heart. We knew that in one of his previous households he’d spent years eating fatty human foods and getting little exercise. He was well loved but his health suffered as a result. We hoped that by investing in his health we could postpone or even reverse the possibility of heart failure.

But we couldn’t. Freckles lived in our home for a little over three years, creating a slow steady presence so grounding and anchoring that I didn’t even realize it until he was gone. Two nights ago Freckles began to struggle to breathe. My partner Nancy and I raced him to the ER vet where he was given oxygen and medication. The interventions didn’t work — nine hours later he went into respiratory failure and then heart failure and died.

When we got to the vet they put us in a corner room with a flyer about getting support after your pet dies. There were tiny cremation urns on the shelves and a box of tissues on a shelf next to the tiny naugahyde couch where we sat.

A vet tech came in and handed us a clipboard with a list of choices for what to do with Freckles. At the top of the list was the several hundred dollar option for individual cremation with a ceramic paw print souvenir. Listed below were other cremation options and the option to take your dog home.

“I want to take him home and bury him in the yard,” I told Nancy.

“I don’t know if I can bear to handle his dead body and bury him,” she said. She was imagining a rigid, dead Freckles.

“Can we see him first and then make a decision?” I asked the tech. “Sure,” she said and left our tiny bereavement room to collect Freckles.

Another tech brought Freckles back. He was strapped to a tiny stretcher underneath a plaid fleece blanket. After she wheeled him in, the tech unstrapped Freckles and left him for us, still covered in the blanket.

Nancy gingerly pulled up the blanket to uncover him. He was still warm, still Freckles. We laid our hands on him and cried. We missed him so much already.

Just minutes after reuniting with his body Nancy looked at me and said, “Let’s take him home,” nodding as tears ran down her face.

We pushed the call button for the tech to tell her our decision.

It felt good to drive home with Freckles. The tech had put Freckles in a tiny cardboard casket and it was comforting to have him in the backseat with us. We decided, on the twenty-minute drive home that we’d bury him between the two vegetable beds he liked to snack out of every summer. His favorite were the snap peas. Every season Freckles ravaged my pea plants, his fat little butt hanging off the edge of the raised bed as he chomped the plants he could reach.

As soon as we got home I went to my sewing room and got a white cotton sheet I’d been saving for a potential future project. While I ironed the sheet Nancy gathered shovels, gloves, and a pick ax from the garage. I brought the sheet up and we laid it out on the dining room floor so that we could prepare Freckles.

He looked the same in the box as he had on the stretcher. He was still Freckles, still soft and furry, lying on his side, the same position as he often was, napping around the house. Together, we took him out of the box and laid him on the sheet. Nancy got his favorite stuffy, a raggedy old black cat, and we placed that between his paws. We added a carrot and his tooth cleaning bone, two of his favorite snacks.

Then we wrapped him in the blanket, tucking him in for his next journey. Friends had brought flowers to a dinner party we’d hosted the night before and we laid several buds on top of his wrapped body. We said thank you and goodbye and then we went out to dig a hole.

I’d read that we would need to dig a hold three-feet deep. We didn’t really forge a plan for how we’d do it. We just started digging. To accommodate Freckles’ body the hole would need to be short, narrow, and very deep. We dug from soil to clay to rocks. It took about two hours and lots of inventive techniques to dig the hole. We barely spoke as we dug, both grateful for the activity to distract us from our grief.

By the end we were covered in dirt and filled with pride at our accomplishment. We went in to gather Freckles. After another round of goodbyes and the last minute addition of his pink monkey, we carried Freckles out to the garden and kneeled down to lay him into the hole. We thanked him and told him we loved him. And then we covered him up with the soil we’d just dug.

As I meditated this morning I waited for the tapping of Freckles’ nails to come join me on my mat. I keep hearing phantom snoring in the dining room as I sit here writing. I feel the pull to wrap this up so I can take Freckles on his walk before I start my work day.

I feel the absence of Freckles’ presence everywhere. It’s not even been a full day that he’s been gone but I miss him. I miss all his little sounds, gestures, movements, and needs. I missed his excited running in circles at breakfast time this morning and I miss all the walks we’ll take along the lake.

To my left, outside in the garden is the tiny grave we dug for Freckles. He’s there. Last night at his dinner time we went outside to toast him. We lit a candle and made some wishes. We told him thank you and I love you again.

It wasn’t the same last night, going to bed without the sound of Freckles’ snoring. Freckles was everywhere, all the time. There is a huge void in our home. There’s no way around this feeling. It’s the absence of his presence.

A few times since we buried Freckles, in moments where I’m aware of his absence, when I look to his bed and know I’ll never see him snoring there again, I go to the window and look at the raised beds. I look at the spot where we laid him to rest and feel comforted. He’s here. He’s gone but he’ll always be with us.