Count UP to New Years!

Count-UP to New Years!

My brother Scott put his dogs down last week. Two of them. Connor and Moses. They were border collies, and they were brothers. They were 14 years old, and in chronic pain, and he couldn’t stand seeing them suffer any longer. He and his wife adopted the two as puppies, and they became their children two years before any of their human babies were born. When they took them to the vet because they weren’t eating, they were told that the dogs were suffering, and that it was time to let them "rest". The vet suggested that they take the dogs home with some pain medication, prepare their children for what was going to happen, (how, exactly, does one tell three children under the age of 12 that their dogs are going to die?), and bring them back the next day to be euthanized. Scott asked if it could wait for a week, because his daughter’s birthday was three days away, and he didn’t want her to forever associate her birthday with the loss of her dogs. The vet agreed, and prepared a week’s worth of very expensive medication to keep the dogs comfortable.

And so began the longest, saddest, and most surreal week of my brother’s life. He booked a photographer to take family pictures with the dogs.  The photos are lovely, if you don’t know the story. The whole family is dressed in new Christmas outfits, with their hair nicely styled and pleasant smiles on their faces. If you look closely, however, you can see that their eyes are sad. In one picture, the youngest boy is holding on to Connor’s collar just a bit too tightly– you can see that his knuckles are white. In another, the oldest boy has tears in his eyes as he leans his head on Moses. 

On the little girl’s birthday, Scott’s wife Robyn took her out for their traditional girls’ day treat of a mani-pedi and a milkshake. The little girl had a panic attack halfway through, afraid that the dogs would be gone before she got back home. For the full week, two of the kids insisted on sleeping beside the dogs on the kitchen floor every night. The third one - the oldest boy - barricaded himself in his room, and said things like “I wish they were gone already. I can’t look at them. It makes me too sad…” Scott and Robyn vacillated between these same extremes; they both struggled to go to work every day, wanting instead to spend every possible moment with the dogs, while also having their moments of wishing that the dogs were already “at peace”, so this excruciating period of waiting for death could end.

I understand what it feels like to wait for death, as a bystander. My father is dying, but not quickly enough for his liking. He has diabetes, and is being kept alive with medications and dialysis, but he wants to die. He had his left leg amputated from the knee down two years ago, and was just beginning to walk effectively with a prosthetic when he had to have three toes removed from his left foot. He is now confined to a wheelchair. My dad is a proud man. Growing up, he made it very clear that – if he was ever unable to look after himself – he would want to die. He is living at a nursing home because none of us, including mom, can physically lift him to change and bathe him any longer. He has become a miserable, grumpy, old fuck that nobody honestly wants to visit because he just complains and tells us how much he wants to die every time we do. He has applied for a medically-assisted death, but he does not qualify yet, because he is not in enough pain yet, and his death is not imminent yet. The drugs and the dialysis are allowing us – forcing us – to live in this world of “not yet”. We are waiting for death, while trying not admit to ourselves or to each other that, on some level, we all wish that he could be “at peace” already. We can’t admit that we want our dad to die. Because we don’t. But we do ant him to stop suffering. Which means that we want him to die. We live in the grey in-between area of regret and guilt and grief. It’s excruciating.

I have always found the week before Christmas and New Year’s difficult. I am a teacher, and I have always assumed that the disorientation I feel during this period is due to a lack of structure, too much free time, and way too much wine and chocolate. Now I realize, however, that this week is also a week of in-between.  A week of “not yet”. It is a week of waiting for an old year to end while berating ourselves for the goals we failed to obtain during that year - the weight we did not lose and the new weight we gained, the debt we did not shed and the new debt we accumulated. Near the end of the week, we begin to think of the New Year as our ticket out of our misery. We need the New Year to be the beginning of something new. New Year, New You. So, we count down. Last night, my husband and I watched on t.v. as the ball dropped in Times Square, and we counted down - along with all of our televised friends - from ten to one. We raised a glass of champagne to the New Year, we kissed each other, and we felt better about ourselves and our lives and the future for a few minutes. Then we went to bed.

This morning, when I got up, I felt tired and groggy. I just wanted to go back to bed. I did not feel like a new me. Counting down did not bring the promised new start, but just a continuation of the life I was leading the day before (which is not, actually, such a bad life…). 

It occurs to me that perhaps counting down is not the way to begin a new year. Countdowns, after all, rarely end well. As a child of 12, I sat at my desk in my Grade 6 classroom, counting down as we all watched the Challenger prepare for take-off in 1986. We were watching it in class because a teacher was on board for the first time. As Canadians, none of us had watched a launch before, so we didn’t know the difference between the fire that was supposed to be there and the fire that was not supposed to be there. We counted down from 10 to 1, then watched wide-eyed as the screen filled with bright light. Our teacher had to explain to us, through his own shock, that the shuttle exploded and the entire crew – including the teacher – had died. Two decades later, a masked surgeon injected anesthetic into my arm and told me to count down from 10. I started to feel the panic at 7. I didn’t make it past 4 before going under. When I woke up, I learned that my gall bladder was gangrene and I had almost died on the operating table. The surgeon had worked a miracle, and I would be fine. While in the hospital recovering, I thought back to the panic I felt when I was going under. I realized that counting down made me think that something bad was about to happen. Watching those astronauts die on t.v. after my classmates and I had all counted down from ten had made me fear what would happen at zero.

My brother and his wife took Connor and Moses in on a Tuesday. The dogs lay on the table nose to nose, and my brother spooned one while his wife spooned the other. The vet called in another vet so both dogs could be injected at the same time. And then the vet counted down from ten. At zero, the dogs were gone. Scott and Robyn wept and held their babies for a full fifteen minutes before they were able to get off the table and hold each other. As he told me this story, I couldn’t help but wonder if this is how it’s going to be with dad. Will we climb into his bed with him and hold him while the doctor prepares a deadly concoction for him to inject into his own arm? Will we count down from ten, and lose him at zero? Will we weep? Will we all hold each other, as we haven’t done for many years? And then – when it’s all over – will we feel…what? Perhaps a sense of guilt, or regret, or even some relief? When we come through a period of in-between, and we arrive on the other side of it – how do we feel? When we count down and things end either with an explosion or silent oblivion – but definitely death – how do we then face the new day, the new year, the new life?

Is there an alternative? Instead of counting down, could we count up? Could we up look towards life instead of down at death? As a child, I remember my mother counting up from one to three while I stood on the diving board at the town pool. Butterflies fluttered in my belly as I looked into that blue water. I saw her there, treading water, arms wide and smile wider, and I knew I was safe. As she shouted out the number two, I stepped to the edge and bent my knees. At three, I swallowed my fear and jumped up into the air. For an exhilarating second, I was flying. Then I was inhaling water. Then I was pulled up by strong arms and I was safe. I was sputtering and laughing wildly while she hugged me. Many years later, when my daughter was very little, her father and I would go for walks with her between us. We would each hold one of her chubby little hands. She would look from one to the other of us and ask “One, two, three? Pweeese?” until we would oblige. “One”, her dad would say in his deep voice. “Two”, I would say, and she would giggle and grasp our hands tighter in anticipation. “Three!” we would yell together as we swept her up into the air, so high her shiny pink rubber boots would fly off her feet and onto the road ahead of us. She would shriek with joy and beg for “again, again, again” every single time. We would laugh and hug her and – of course – oblige.

If I have one New Year’s Resolution this year, this is it. I will stop counting down from ten. I will not count down through the last dying days and minutes of an old year, or even of an old day or an old minute.  I will not live life with new clothes on my body but old sadness in my heart. I will not allow the next time that I hug my siblings to be when we are all in a bed with my dying father. Instead, I will start counting up to three. I will stand on more diving boards. I will feel more butterflies in my belly. I will be afraid more often, but I will swallow the fear. I will jump in the air every time, knowing that I will be safe. I will shriek with joy when my rubber boots fly off.  I will always – always – do it again and again.   Next year, as 2020 ends and 2021 begins, I will raise a glass of champagne and count UP to the new life ahead. 1 – 2 – 3…Happy New Year!