I Got to Know the Love of His Life

He called Zeus the love of his life.

Not jokingly. Not in the exaggerated way we sometimes talk about our dogs when they're sleeping upside down on the couch or staring at us like we've personally betrayed them by eating something without sharing.

He meant it, and I believed him.

I knew him at the beach…sandy and wet, wandering ahead of us and then looking back to make sure his person was still there.

I knew him with salt water drying on his fur and the whole Pacific Ocean somehow not being enough adventure for one afternoon.

I knew him on long walks where the humans talked about things we probably thought were important while Zeus attended to the actual business of being alive: the water, the smells, the other dogs, the sun.

He was very good at it; dogs usually are.

I came into their story late.

By the time I knew Zeus, they had already lived an entire life together.

There were homes I never saw. Mornings I wasn't there for. Bad days I know nothing about. Younger versions of both of them I'll never meet.

Zeus knew a man before I did.

He knew him through years I can only imagine. Through heartbreak and happiness and ordinary Tuesdays. Through whatever versions of himself he tried on and discarded along the way.

He knew the vulnerable core of a person. Dogs get that version of us.

Not the one we send out into the world. Not the charming one or the competent one or the one who says everything is fine.

They get the person standing barefoot in the kitchen at midnight.

The person who is tired.

The person who is lonely.

The person who doesn't want to talk.

They don't require an explanation; they just move a little closer.

Maybe that's why losing a dog is such an impossible kind of grief.

You aren't only losing someone you loved.

You're losing someone who knew every version of you and never once wondered which one was the real one.

They all were, and he loved them all.

I watched the end of their story arrive slowly, and then all at once.

There were bad days and hopeful days and phone calls and appointments and the terrible arithmetic you start doing when you love an animal who is getting old or sick: Is he eating? Is he comfortable? Was today better than yesterday? Are there still more good moments than bad ones?

Love becomes logistics for a while.

Medicine. Food. Sleep. Watching. Worrying.

And underneath all of it is the question nobody wants to ask because asking it feels too much like betrayal:

How will I know when it's time?

There is something extraordinary about watching someone love an animal that much.

I saw it in a hundred small ways.

The concern.

The accommodations.

The way Zeus's name entered conversations even when he wasn't there.

The way plans bent around him.

The way a grown man's entire face would change when he talked about his dog.

I am so thankful that, near the end, I got to say goodbye.

There are moments when you understand that you are standing inside a memory while it's happening.

That was one of them.

All at once, I knew there would never be another ordinary day out with Zeus.

No more casually assuming there would be another walk, another afternoon, another chance to watch him wander ahead and turn around to make sure we were still there.

It's one of the cruelest things about loving anything.

Almost every last time happens before we know it's the last time.

Space. Silence. No one meets you at the door, and everything feels a little less whole.

Then, one day…puppies.

Athena and Hercules.

Tiny. Chaotic. Completely unconcerned with the emotional significance of their arrival.

They needed to eat.

They needed to play.

They needed to chew things they absolutely should not be chewing.

They needed everyone to stop contemplating the nature of grief for five minutes because somebody was probably peeing somewhere.

I loved them immediately for that.

Not because they replaced Zeus; they couldn't.

That isn't how love works.

There is no puppy-shaped eraser for grief.

The life you had with one animal doesn't disappear because another one comes barreling into the room.

If anything, the puppies made Zeus's absence more visible.

New paws where old paws had been.

New routines beginning where another had ended.

A house learning a different rhythm.

Maybe they also taught me something about what happens after the love of your life leaves.

The heart doesn't clear the room; it builds an addition.

Zeus gets to stay.

The beaches stay.

The walks stay.

The years I never knew stay.

The version of a man that only his dog ever completely knew stays.

Somehow there is still room in a life and a heart for Athena and Hercules.

For tiny toes and sharp teeth and new disasters.

For the exhausting, ridiculous optimism of something at the very beginning of its life.

I don't know what you say to someone who has lost the love of his life.

I still don't think there is a sentence big enough for that.

I only know that, for a little while, I got to know him too.

I got the sunny days.

I got the sandy messes and the long walks and the ridiculous sweetness of him.

I got to watch him turn around to find you.

I got to say goodbye.

I got to watch you love something completely, without embarrassment or reservation.

That may be the loveliest thing you've ever shown me.

I used to think Zeus was wandering through the edges of days that belonged to us.

I understand now that we were wandering through his, and now two tiny dogs are beginning a story of their own.

They will never know the dog who came before them, but I hope, somehow, they inherit something from him.

A favorite stretch of beach.

A familiar path.

A face gleefully out the window of the car.

A thousand stories they'll never understand.

The extraordinary luck of belonging to someone who already knows exactly how much loving a dog can cost…

and chooses to do it again anyway.