Parting with Peggy^*

St. Ambrose College
Davenport IA

Peggy died yesterday. I had her put to sleep. It was not at all as I thought it would be.

Knowing Peggy's strong heart and unflinching love of life, I pictured what might be if the moment came when I alone would have to decide that it was best that Peggy be put down, as we say. I thought I would make the decision. I expected it to be an agonising one. I thought that Peggy would be on the vet's table for the last time and would turn her reproachful look on me. The reproachful look is the one she used, in collaboration with Roxy, to tell me that I was off to bed without having given them their nightly treats; or that the time for their walk was past, and I was still preoccupied with people things.

But it was not like that. We reached the decision together, with each of us having a part in it.

The experience of Peggy's going to sleep in death was deeply integrative for me. Technology, in the form of the blood profile, informed me that her internal organs were beyond repair, worn out with over fifteen years of life, filling her with nausea. Reason told me that I must keep Peggy within the framework of my total life -- for this is what is meant when Christ says that we must turn our backs even on father and mother for his sake: otherwise we are not worthy of the reward.

I prayed to act with a right heart. I reconstructed in memory how closely Christ Jesus lived with animals -- with beasts of burden before bicycles or cars or airplanes; with the little dogs that humanity has had as companions and co-workers from primitive times. I listened again to the woman from a strange country who pleaded her cause by means of an analogy with dogs; somebody in Jesus' company -- maybe the Master himself -- had been feeding the dogs from the table, responding to their silent begging. ("Give me my request -- so what, if I am not an Israelite; even the dogs receive the crumbs from the master's table").

I asked Julian, because I ask her everything. She said, as she always does, that love and compassion is the meaning of all; she said that perhaps it was no longer fitting to try to take pain from Peggy; perhaps it was time for Peggy to be taken from pain.

I asked Annette, who had died when Peggy was five. She flooded my mind with images of the life Peggy had shared with us, especially the dance in which Peggy moved in rhythm on her rear legs and Annette sang an inclusive language adaptation of Lord of the Dance. "Dance, dance, wherever you may be . . . ." That was a clue, for the dance of creation is eternal.

I asked Saint Francis, who loved animals, pleading to know what to do with sister Peggy. "It is fitting to give her to sister Death and then to sister Fire," he said. "Her spirit and body belong with sister Fire, who is beautiful and powerful and transforms by consuming."

These were helps to the decision, which, Dr. Keppy said, was mine alone to make But he didn't tell me that it was also Peggy's decision.
Yesterday morning, I rose early expecting to help Peggy up the basement steps to take her outdoors. (She had not taken any food for several days -- except to nibble the hearts out of some slices of cooked carrot to try to please me.) But Peggy, weak as she was, had climbed the stairs by herself and was waiting on the landing. Her look said how victorious she felt and also how glad that I had come down early.

For several hours she tried to walk around, resting in between efforts. She tried to hide the nausea that confirmed what the technology graphs had said. I called Tina to come and look at her, as I thought she was dying. Jonna also came bringing Shaman, the young Aussie shepherd whom Peggy loved. Peggy responded with a loving greeting, laying her jaw tenderly against Shaman's, who was gentle and quiet with her. Roxy, the loving Peke-Pom who has been with me since her puppyhood, watched.

With this gathering of her closest friends observing her, Peggy began the ritual. She walked around, collapsing on her haunches between efforts. (How gamely she had gone along with our prodding to keep walking these last weeks, despite her discomfort.) Then the closing ritual: it is like what dogs use when they circle a spot where they choose to sleep. This time Peggy -- as dying dogs do -- circled and circled in her weakness but did not lie down. She was waiting for the final sleep. She stood once more, as best she could, in front of some bright flowers, for a final picture.

I took her in my arms and she relaxed. Peggy rarely allowed herself to be held -- except in storms or other times of danger. But this time she did. Her little body and her suffering eyes said: "Thanks. Now I don't have to walk any more to please you; you are pleased just to know that I want to be held."
We all read the signs and the signals -- Tina, and Jonna, Shaman and Roxy, along with me.

I made an appointment to take her in that morning to Dr. Keppy. We got ready. Peggy's nails were already newly clipped. She had recently had the growth on her eyelid removed and analysed as non-malignant. Her face was clean and unblemished. I brushed her fine and beautiful coat carefully. I touched her shapely brow with a few drops of holy water. Then I chose for myself a brightly figured long skirt and a pink blouse -- the color used in the holding cells in the jails to calm the women brought in for detention.
Tina drove us in her van while I held the relaxed, loving, trustful Peggy in my arms, swaying with the cradling motion of the car. Peggy, who had always watched the landscape from the car, sniffing at the fast food odours, barking a greeting at other dogs riding by, saw or smelled nothing, even though her eyesight and hearing and smell were unimpaired. She just trusted and loved. The wind and the water currents of trust and love moved in both directions and fused. Later the little body would go to sister Fire, who would enfold her in arms of energy and symbolic love.

Bobby at the reception desk looked sad, reminding us how such a short time back Peggy frisked about the room -- lively and alert. (Then we paused to have Bobby show us pictures of her new baby, only a few months old.)

Peggy did not resist lying on the examining table where she had always before struggled with unbelievable strength to get down and away. (I had thought it would be that way on the last trip, and that when the strength to struggle had drained away she would concentrate all her resistance and reproach in one powerful last look that would grieve and haunt me; that I would have to comfort myself by saying that my human reason exceeded her ways of knowing and that I would have to act as before, when we inflicted pain to ease her pain or prevent it.)

But it was not that way. Dr. Keppy explained what reflex actions or sounds might occur; and he also explained that the dog literally falls asleep under the impact of a powerful barbiturate that instantly stops the heart -- even Peggy's strong, undamaged heart. I cradled the relaxed, trusting dog, supporting her beautiful head. I said in her ear: "I give you permission, Peggy." With a quietly humming razor he shaved off a few inches of hair from her leg. He inserted the needle with the powerful fluid gently under the skin. There was no cry, no twitching, no reflex. Peggy had chosen sleep, in my arms. The little body was already beginning to stiffen. The soft hair was still beautiful. Her shapely face mirrored peace at last. The winds and the waters of her love moved in one direction -- or did they?

I was moved to observe: "Everything lives forever." And I reminded Dr. Keppy of what good care he had always given Peggy, snatching her from near-death twice before.

Tina had been with me. "I am so glad I was there. It was beautiful." All of us were at peace, with a sense that all things had been rightly done -- as to time and place and feeling and decision -- in the early months of Peggy's sixteenth year. I had been able to read Peggy's final message, and together we had acted. Friends helped us along the way, sharing in the mystery of those bonds between people and the animals they love. In some form these bonds are eternal, belonging to the ground of love and compassion which is the meaning of all.

I called El, who has lost two dogs, and hence knows what is happening. She said Miss McCrae would be grieved. Teresa called, remembering her recent loss of her young Sheltie, Maria, in Albuquerque. Rosemary called, transcending her natural fear of animals to touch the human cord. Mary called, saying she had been thinking of us all day, after she had seen Peggy's weakness and revealing look on Thursday. I went grocery shopping to comfort myself with the high comfort of life's common routine. There I met Julie, who loved Peggy and her own dogs, and understands my story supremely well. ("Peggy was a gift.") Barbara and Shirley from Kansas City dropped in for a few hours, and we talked about disruptions in their own lives.

We will have our party as previously arranged, with friends coming to the house where Peggy lived, to celebrate her life -- El, Germaine, Rosemary, and Teresa. Mary would be here, but Michael is sick. Jonna and I will celebrate Monday night as planned, before she takes off for Ghent to give her science paper; but Peggy, who had been invited, will not be seen.

That is how it was . . . and is.

"Peggy: 'Dance, dance, wherever you may be . . . .'"

* Reprinted from Vox Benedictina 10/1 (1993) 114-121.