D allas came into my life when I was eight weeks old, when I was only 19. The little brown bundle of rolls and folds that clumsily marched through my house with oversized paws never stood a chance of developing into what most would consider a classically "good dog" to be. As he grew to his oversized appendages as a 115-pound lap dog, I also evolved through the tumultuous period of adolescence. As my social, professional, and personal identity solidified, Dallas remained a constant denominator in all dimensions of my self-identity. I was a "dog owner" and most who knew me couldn't introduce me without my huge and drooling companion by my side.
Throughout life, Dallas has effortlessly shown the unconditional positive appreciation that so many counselors seek to show their clients. He's been in attendance at degrees, new jobs, the loss of family members, and personally devastating health diagnoses. Whether I was happy or tormented, Robert was there to share my experience and to give me the reassurance I needed through his drooping brown eyes.
Our family was finally complete when I met my fiancée, a student of veterinary medicine, at the university where I was doing my Masters in Counseling. She immediately told me Dallas was overweight and kindly pointed out other ways I could best serve Dallas. As we hit milestones in the relationship and eventually added another pet, Willett, Dallas seemed even happier and happier.
Dallas (photo courtesy of Corban Smith)
Dallas is diagnosed
In the eleven years prior to August 2019, Dallas had survived dozens of mischievous acts that threatened his well-being. Although I knew his life would eventually end, I couldn't imagine a world in which anything could cause his death. One morning that started out like any other, I took Dallas outside to show off his unusually large morning "business" deposits. I heard him make a strange noise and looked down to see him tense up in the grass. As he reached out, I held him like never before. Covered in morning dew, grass and dirt, I had never felt so helpless. I yelled for my partner, and when Robert got through his postictal period we took him to his vet.
The news was gloomy. Due to my financial situation, the vet advised against expensive diagnostic procedures as I probably couldn't afford the expensive treatments for everything that was discovered. He concluded that Dallas likely had a scary brain tumor in his furry brown head and said we should focus on making the rest of his time with us as comfortable as possible. As the first pains of grief and guilt set in, I began to feel ashamed that I couldn't afford to give Dallas the care that could add a little longer to our time together.
Armed with anti-epileptic drugs and the horrifying realization that one day Dallas would actually no longer be with me, one of the most stressful years of my life began for me. Soon a pattern in Dallas symptom management emerged. He had no symptoms for a long time, then in the middle of the night a breakthrough popped up like an evil intruder. My partner, who is now the Dallas Chief Vet, would reevaluate his medication and the cycle would go on. Slowly the times of well-being shortened and the breakthrough seizures increased in intensity.
This slow end of life process was excruciatingly unpredictable and painful as I felt a learned helplessness. Every night I crawled into bed, afraid that at some point during the night I would hear the initial gag signaling an episode. I walked around the house during the day, dreading the discovery of puddles of postictal incontinence. I've lamented this emotional roller coaster ride immensely. Health phases were bright spots in my life, while breakthrough seizures were always darker memories of reality. At some point I knew that I had to say the words: "That's it."
The event
The choking and pounding noise that signaled a seizure came, as always, in the middle of the night, just as I was imagining that everything was okay. However, this one felt different. Not only did it take longer and cause even more confusion afterward, but the disturbing truth that Dallas was on its maximum dose of medication meant that it was, in fact, "it". We waited anxiously with a semblance of hope to see if another seizure would come. Previous recurrent seizures had appeared eight hours after the first; this next round came in just four.
Making the decision that this day would be the last day of Dallas was a shamefully simple one. A combination of emotional exhaustion, stress related to impending doom, and the reality of treatment restrictions likely contributed to this. My partner was forced to go to the office and work, which is the last time we reminded Dallas that he was a "good boy" while I had the privilege of being Dallas & # 39; to spend the last day with him. I was distant from what came later that day and treated him like any other day for Dallas. In between more seizures that day, Dallas played his favorite game "What Will Dallas Not Eat?" We lay on the couch watching The Fifth Element (the movie that Dallas' namesake Korben Dallas is the protagonist in) while his sister Willett licked his ears and tried to rid his head of any hint of malice. At some point it was time to recharge and I experienced the first sense of loss that brought me back to reality. Leaving Willett behind, I told her, "We'll be back" and then quickly changed that statement to "I'll be back," tears welling up in my eyes.
As a little boy, I had only ever experienced a pet being euthanized. That day, I was put back in my younger self and tried to intellectually order thoughts of death and purpose in life instead of experiencing the pain present. What had made this inevitable outcome cognitively distant was the presentation of Dallas when he failed to grip. Even in the death room, Dallas presented himself in his usual posture. Happily, he ate Cheez Whiz sprayed on the floor for him and selflessly parted the remains on the clothes and faces of my partner's colleagues as they came in one by one to say goodbye. In the end we were left alone with him.
My partner and I sat trying to say goodbye for good while Dallas tried to reassure us that everything would be fine. My partner was forced to take on the role of the veterinarian to tell me what to expect. She kindly sketched the euthanasia process, as she must have done with countless other grieving owners, but her voice was trembling and her eyes were filled with tears. Another vet knocked shyly on the door and asked if we were ready. I shakily answered "yes" but really wasn't. She knelt next to Robert and began administering the chemical as I tried to remember every detail of my beloved companion lying on the floor. In true Dallas fashion – since he was the dog who could handle anything and survive – it took an extra dose of the deadly brew to get into the next world. When my fiancée colleague announced that Dallas was gone, I hugged him one last time and then really broke down in a way that only profound loss can cause.
The mourning process
Grief is truly a unique and inevitable part of the human experience. We are all brought into grief by a loss at some point in our lives. I'd seen losses in the form of relationships, failed ventures, and hobbies that were considered too dangerous for someone my age. But these things were nothing compared to the way Robert was deeply embedded in my identity. The pain of this loss penetrated my core.
As a counselor, I was trained in grief, grief and the strategies we use to empower our clients. All of that knowledge and experience seemed to evaporate once Dallas was diagnosed. Suddenly, grief and loss weren't topics discussed in the classroom; they had become deeply personal.
Shortly after Dallas was diagnosed, I began to prepare for his loss as best I could with this knowledge from the classroom. I dusted off my textbook on crisis intervention and tried to remember the works of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and William Worden. I quickly landed on Woden's grief model assignments as I tried to intellectualize my now inevitable loss of Dallas. As a consultant, I try to promote resilience and empowerment in my clients. As I embarked on the dangerous venture of becoming my own advisor, I told myself to focus on the tasks I could do to help myself become more resilient from this process than I had done before .
Mourning tasks
Worden's mourning tasks should not be done in a specific order and can be repeated during the mourning process. As soon as Dallas was diagnosed – and before I sought the knowledge of grief – I had started doing the chores, and I have done so after losing Dallas. Sometimes I am satisfied with the completion of my tasks, sometimes I am surprised by signs of a lack of progress. My understanding of the process of grief so far is that it goes up and down in a non-linear, somewhat unpredictable manner.
Task: Accept the reality of loss. I began to conceptually accept the loss of Dallas as soon as he was diagnosed with a potential brain tumor. During the symptom treatment year, I was able to do this task superficially, so I thought I would be ready for my new reality when Dallas was gone.
When Dallas died, I struggled with this task on a much deeper core level. I naively believed that working on the assignment so far before Dallas ’departure would help keep me from not accepting this new lonely reality. When I got home from the veterinary clinic on the day he was put to sleep, the numbness affected me most. The rest of the week's activities and responsibilities seemed to pass me by because this new reality that I lived in was alien to the one I knew.
Technology was both a blessing and a curse when I tried to do justice to this task. By endlessly scrolling the camera roll on my iPhone, I stuck to Dallas & # 39; Presence fixed. As I scrolled up, Dallas was getting younger and more of the companion I'd idealized. Photos of him jumping as high as house guests offered a stark comparison to the old man who had needed help to get on the bed. The live photo feature was particularly worrying. As I held my finger on a photo, Dallas suddenly came back to life, my phone making the daily noises and images that I longed for desperately in our home.
However, social media was one of the best media outlets to commemorate Dallas as I continued this quest. My favorite photos, discovered while scrolling, were shared with friends and family in a memorial post. When others expressed their sadness and condolences, I was amazed to learn how many other lives Robert had touched. Long-forgotten friends and contacts reappeared to share stories and memories of Dallas. Many of them confirmed my new reality without Dallas as painful and uncomfortable. Your support helped me to accept this other world better and motivated me to get closer to it instead of resisting and staying comfortable.
Task: to deal with the pain of grief. I am very fortunate that any inhibition to come to terms with the pain of my grief was self-inflicted and not encouraged by my fellow human beings. I've heard stories from those who have lost pets, whose grief has been disenfranchised by those around them. The expectation of continuing to work while dividing the grief plagues many people after losing a pet. I was very fortunate that no one in my life had such expectations of me. I was supported and understood as if I had just lost a family member who was deeply integrated into my self-esteem.
My work on this task was mainly hampered by self-imposed restrictions. I mistakenly believed that the damage processing completed since the Dallas diagnosis would be enough for the actual event to be a slight speed bump on my productivity path. The counselor in me said, "It's okay if you are experiencing this pain and have difficulty functioning," but my cultural background simply said, "Overcome it."
Toxic masculinity is widespread in our world, and I am guilty of spreading it too. People who don't know me well would consider me a classic stereotype of masculinity by most metrics. I am genetically broad-shouldered and proudly wear a full beard. My hobbies so far have been skydiving, motorcycling and owning German sports cars. I ride an off-road vehicle to my Olympic weightlifting club and my preference for men who are like me says that losing a dog shouldn't tear such men to tears or limit their ability to participate in life roles. As I looked at myself through this lens, I pushed the pain and experience away for longer than I should have. At some point I could no longer be the stable and stoic presence in my home and work; I had to succumb to the pain.
As I began to align my views on masculinity with what I knew as a counselor, I realized that feeling pain and expressing my emotions were among the most manly endeavors I could participate in. I shared my feelings and experiences more freely with those around me and continued to be validated and supported as I tried to meet the demands of life while I was in such pain.
Task: Adapt to a world in which the deceased is absent. Articles I read prior to losing Dallas described the new home environment as "deafening silence." As I tried to mentally prepare myself to leave Dallas, I got used to the noises it made on a daily basis. I tried to arm myself for what the absence of those noises might be, but the emptiness when he returned home after his death was still crippling.
My partner and I did our best to complete this task as quickly as possible. We all have memories that came to mind shortly after Dallas & # 39; Death away. Dallas-sized toys that were unattractive to Willett were donated to my partner's practice for other dogs to enjoy. The short brown fur tumbleweeds were sucked up from the various surfaces where they always clung to. Dallas medicines and food have been removed. These physical memories were easy to erase; classical conditioning, rooted over a 12 year period, was much more difficult to ignore.
Given the enormity of Dallas, there was little he could do that did not resonate in our little house. The cracking of his nails as he walked, the slamming of furniture as he forcibly followed his intended path, even the heavy wheezing that echoed through the house from his very existence were instantly gone. There was no longer a huge brown threshold in the kitchen to navigate while cooking, or a face of sheer delight at the bottom of the stairs when we got home. Even watching TV at night without the occasional gas from the corner of the cut seemed like a strange experience.
Countless other experiences have become isolating and lonely affairs since Robert's death. Fortunately, this task gets easier over time as the frequency of unexpected memories decreases. At some point I know that the relationship between daily activities and the presence of Dallas will erode and disappear, shifting this void from absence to a new normal.
Task: Find a lasting connection to the deceased while starting a new life. Worden's previous iterations of this task included the terms "emotional redistribution" and "emotional reinvestment". This task is characterized by a sense of moving on while accepting and appreciating the effects of the loss on the life and self-identity of the griever. As I progress in my life it is impossible not to ignore the impression my relationship with Dallas has made and the lasting impact it will have in the future.
I think of all the lessons I learned from Dallas and how they will present themselves in the future. I wonder how my ability to care for those around me would have changed if I hadn't looked after Dallas first. I wonder how otherwise I would experience frustration without first going through Dallas & # 39; destructive behavior to build patience. Ultimately, without witnessing the loss of Dallas, I wonder how much less prepared I would be for a loss in the future. I feel that my experience as a caregiver for Dallas has greatly enhanced my ability to show compassion and kindness in other roles. Thanks to Dallas, I can be a little better in my many life roles as a consultant, partner, son and friend.
Conclusion
While commuting back and forth between these tasks and making progress, I sometimes ask myself: "Am I doing this right?" Ask myself whether I removed reminders too early, lived on too early or even made the decision too early to close euthanizing, dominated my mourning process.
This experience gave me a better insight into a process that I had previously only conceived in a classroom. The compulsion to face this inevitable human experience has taught me to give plenty of space and compassion to grieving clients, and to have minimal expectations of their grief. Grief is an individual experience. There are models, but none perfectly sums up what it feels like and what it looks like to grieve.
Our grieving process culminated last year when we drove home for Christmas. Robert lived his life, except for his last five months, in my little house in Alabama. Before we moved into a real house with an enclosed garden in Virginia, he spent his time outside on a picturesque piece of land next to a lake. When I close my eyes I can still imagine my happy and healthy Robert splashing around and chasing geese, often looking at me encouraged. This place where Dallas seemed happiest is where we scattered its ashes on a cold Alabama day with tears in our eyes but a sense of determination in our hearts. I hope that one day I will find him there splashing and galloping right behind the rainbow bridge.
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Corban Smith is a doctoral student in the advisory and supervision program at James Madison University (JMU) with a particular interest in drug use and counseling for offenders. He currently works both as a lecturer at JMU and as a prison and emergency clinician for the Valley Community Services Board. He and his wife live in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where they enjoy serving every being they meet. Contact Corban at [email protected].
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