2/27/10
When I think back on the February of 2010, I will always remember the icy indifference of winter, the precarious beauty of white snow and saying goodbye to our beloved dog, Coco.
I had not wanted a dog, nine years ago. I had never had a dog, even though I always had a natural inclination to love animals, especially canines. However, I didn’t want the responsibility, the commitment and the burden of worrying about another “child”. But a friend of Mark’s at work had a Golden Labrador retriever that was due to have puppies and Mark and Lindsay and Kim’s plans were very different from mine. Coco was born January 7, 2001, the runt of a litter of six pups, the only chocolate one. These two facts already abated my resistance, because I have a weakness for chocolate and one of my favorite characters in a book is Wilbur, the runt of the litter in Charlotte’s Web. We went to meet her. I took my mom with us. She will always talk about that day when she held Coco in the palm of her hand. I was still unsure, though. The three musketeers, my husband and children, begged. I said, “No”. They said, “C’mon, we’ll name her “Truffle”. “Truffle?” I said. “That’s a stupid name. Her name should be…Coco.” Mark’s eyes lit up. “Does that mean we could have her?"“No,” I said, “whoever takes her, tell them her name is Coco.” They begged some more. I said, “No.” And then they bamboozled me and brought her home, anyway. All three pounds of her. Three pounds of chocolate fur, with jade green eyes, wrapped up in the girls ABC baby quilt that I had saved.
One thing I learned- puppies are like infants. All night she cried. When she stopped, I couldn’t find her. She was in Lindsay’s arms, in bed, trembling. All she did was cry and crap, cry and crap and cry. I couldn’t take it. I said, “No. Why don’t you all believe me?” My house was a mess. I started having a tantrum. I made phone calls to anyone who would take a dog. They were all crying, then, Lindsay, Kimberly, Mark and Coco. Coco started to tremble. I picked her up; three pounds of trembling puppy. I held her tight in my arms. She buried her tiny head with the flappy ears inside my elbow. The trembling slowed and then stopped and there I was, holding three pounds of chocolate that melted in my heart. The phone rang. It was a friend I had called. “My boss will take the dog,” she said. “What dog?” I answered. Lindsay hung up the phone. They all looked at me, defeated, by this lovable canine. Then I said, “I can’t believe I have a dog.”
And so it began, our life with Coco, who quickly became a member of our family, and the "child" I spoiled the most. She was such a rambunctious little thing, getting into trouble, constantly, true to her puppy nature. At times, I thought I should have named her “Coocoo”. But, in spite of my initial protests and all the trouble she caused- eating my kitchen wallpaper, chewing our socks, and even once, ripping up twenty-five dollars I had left on the dining room table- I loved her more than words could say. Three pounds turned into 68 pounds of affectionate, boundless energy. She was such a pretty dog, too. I remember once walking her and a van stopped as it turned onto the street. A woman ran out and came over to us. “I just had to come over and meet this beautiful dog!" she exclaimed.
As beautiful as she was, that’s how energetic and happy she was. When people she loved came over, she would jump all over them and eventually wind up trying to sit on their heads. Veterinarians would tell me the jumping would subside, but it never did. My mother would get extra special love from Coco; she would lick her whole face, sometimes sticking her tongue in her mouth. My dad called her “the lesbian dog.”
We have such happy, funny, wonderful memories of her. The best memory I have is how she used to sit on the window seat in the kitchen window and guard the house. We bought the house because of the window seat, honestly. I said, “This will be Coco’s spot.” And it was. As we would drive up she would watch us get out of the car, and start to rise, her tail wagging wildly. I would wave to her, like an idiot. It was my joy every day. No matter what kind of day I had, that was the highlight of it- seeing my Coco happy to see me.
On Wednesday, February 3. I was getting ready to leave for a business trip. As Coco went to jump on her window seat, she fell. It was the first sign to me, of what was to come. I left for California, with an ache in my heart I could not describe. I returned on Saturday morning to Coco, greeting me, as always, at the door. We had to leave her for the day and drive through a blizzard to get to my nephew, Jared’s, bar mitzvah. It was hazardous conditions, but we made it and made it back in time to have Coco welcome us when we arrived home. That night, however, when she slept with us in bed, she was unusually clingy to me. In the middle of the night, she even stood up and looked down on my head as if to tell me something. The next day I was in another room when I heard a strange sound and found her collapsed on the living room floor. She could not get up. We took her to the vet. She had so many things wrong with her, but it all seemed curable and treatable. The last three weeks, she was progressively getting worse, though, and the “essence” of her, her spark, was clearly gone. My friend, Betsy, at work, told me one day, sympathetically, “Jeannie, you need to prepare yourself.” I listened, but thought to myself, how does one “prepare” for this? You joyfully prepare for happy occasions, like babies, parties, birthdays, puppies, and weddings. How do you prepare for loss? Simply, you don’t. I defiantly decided to, instead, hope. I lived by the quote, “In all things, it is better to hope than to despair.”
On Thursday, Lindsay, worried about Coco’s rapidly deteriorating condition, stayed home from work. Things were not good. We rushed her to the vet and then on Friday, we had an appointment with a neurologist. We drove through another blizzard to get there. She had to have an MRI. Before we left, we said our tearful goodbyes, thinking it was only temporary. I kissed her little head, like I always loved to do, and sobbed deeply into her fur. “Mommy loves you,” I told her. Later on in the day, we got the news, which confirmed the worst of the doctor's suspicions. She had a brain tumor, my poor Coco. We were going to try chemotherapy. We could possibly get another six months to a year. We would not give up our hope or our Coco. Unfortunately, hope gave up on us and we were called at 4:15 on Saturday morning to get to the hospital to say our final goodbye. Thankfully, Scott was there to drive us on the callous icy roads. As we wept beside and hugged Coco, a little poodle in a nearby cage watched us closely and when Coco left this world, he let out a little yelp, as if he knew. Wonderful creatures, dogs are, so perceptive to your feelings. They gave us her fur and made a paw print for us, little pieces of my chocolate puppy that melted my heart nine years ago. In the car ride home, under an eerie sky lit by an enormous full moon, we cried incessantly. I turned to Lindsay and chokingly said, “You nursed her the first day we had her- and the last.” It was bitter consolation, though.
Last night, Phyllis, Scott’s mom, a dog lover, as well, called me and said the best solace I needed to hear. “You gave her a life, just remember that. Without all of you, she would not have had the wonderful life like she did.” This is the only solace I have right now. My mom cried with me this morning and said, “She will be a big void in your lives.” That was what my friend, Betsy, wanted me to prepare for, I guess.
It is 9am on Saturday, February 27, our first day in nine years, without our Coco. Her window seat is vacant. The void my mother mentioned will always be there. But the sun is up, shining brightly in the sky, the first time in three weeks. So strange. A brutal heartless, winter still remains. Our grief is overwhelming-beyond the sun, the moon, the stars. I am empty and vacant as that seat, right now.
Coco, we love you, you will be forever a part of our hearts.
