Hospicing Hope by Sara Wright

9/30/2012 – 6/11/2025

  6/12

Part One

Hope’s black eyes pierced my soul- body as she stood staring through me, ears erect. It was time. Are you sure? Yes. She lay back down. I immediately got up.

 Walking helps me to process what I must do. A half an hour later I called.

A numbing drive, walking into a room lit with three candles, and a brief wait before the two kindly women appeared.

Hope washed my tearful face as I held her, reminding me that we would never be separated. For thirteen years she had showered me with kisses beginning each day and again at night before we slept. A long low sigh, before Hope took her last breath. Her body suddenly felt limp, heavy in my arms. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that her heaped up overflowing heart had ceased to beat.

  Lucy, her twelve year old adopted sister peered anxiously at me as I looked down at her, eyes perplexed. Seconds later Lucy’s pencil thin tail went limp as the knowing seeped in. As usual we conversed beneath words.

A blurry drive home.

I brought Lucy in and went to retrieve Hope’s little body, surprised that she had soiled herself. I warmed the water in the sink and lovingly cleaned the velvet brown fur so grateful that she didn’t have to experience this humiliation during life, yet for me this simple act of washing her body felt like a gift. Wrapping her in a thick warm towel Lucy’s ebony portals were glued to my every movement as she followed me onto the porch. I sat down next to Hope drying her body. Lucy, whose life has been hanging in the balance for three years with a failing heart was too weak to join us but implored me to pick her up. Placing her next to Hope Lucy lay down, acknowledging her sister with a brief nuzzle before turning her head away. I  finished drying Hope’s little body, rubbed her with fresh lemon grass and covered her with the towel leaving her face exposed. 

I wept. ‘I love you, oh I love you so much’.

  Restless in such misery, I stood up to retrieve Hope’s blue fleecy burial cloak and bone and sat back down. We three listened to the Mozart Requiem as I stared out the window  merging into the late spring greening…

He arrived just as the music was ending an hour later, this friend who had offered to dig her grave the week before. He gently touched Hope’s ears, tears streaming down his face. Emotionally present for all of us, this casual dog loving friend was the gift Nature brought us this day.

Together, we walked outside to bring down the soil my friend had thoughtfully placed in a covered metal can the day he dug her grave. When he opened the cover, a tiny toad hopped out. Oh, trapped for more than a week I placed little toad in the tall grasses where he might find tasty morsels to eat. Returning to the grave I stared into the earth registering the tangle of underground roots that would hold my Beloved as she became a new being… It was time to say goodbye.

 Returning to the house and wrapping the cornflower blue shroud around her body I carried Hope outdoors to the grave while Lucy looked on from the porch. I noted that Hope felt so much lighter – yet her presence was so palpable that I experienced some confusion rising.

 Moaning, covering Hope’s face completely for the last time. I surrendered my dead.

Kneeling as if in prayer I placed my Beloved  into hallowed ground. When my friend shoveled rich sandy earth over her, I was so glad that I had picked this spot in an old flower garden that got lots of sun and was positioned on a descending hill. No amount of rain would puddle above the decaying body of this dearest dog whose dislike of water had plagued her all her life.

Suddenly I recalled a thick round granite rock on the hill. Would he bring it down to place above her? Of course.

  Perfect. This round stone would be a  reminder. Hope demonstrated the importance  of relationship and the need for reconciliation after any temporary fracturing. Feisty and self – willed throughout her life Hope repaired sudden outbursts with a thousand kisses as she begged for forgiveness. How deeply she loved! 

In the last story I wrote about her in April, she demonstrated how to model reweaving misunderstanding by becoming a Weaver herself.

 Another round of tears passed between us as my friend left. ‘Call me if you need me’ he said.

 Walking back down to the house I veered left to the grave and stood there. Oh, her presence was so comforting. I could feel it. I knew she was all right.  

Once again Nature had orchestrated this peaceful ending by bringing in a compassionate man who could be present to my raw vulnerability and to a dead dog he barely knew, easing our transition.

 ‘I had become my own Vet’ just as the dream said.