David McElroy

In the end, it was cancer that took Lucy from me.

I don’t want to talk about this, but I can’t help but tell the story. I can’t speak the words without breaking down, so I’ve told nobody so far. I’ve already given you the big picture view of losing her very early this morning, but here’s how the last day of her precious life really went.

I had known for months that Lucy was declining, so I’d been preparing myself. She didn’t have any symptoms of anything wrong out of the ordinary, but I’ve been through enough death with dogs and cats to recognize when the end is approaching.

Each time I returned home from work this past week, I feared that I would find her dead. I had the same fears about her each morning when I woke up. I knew it was that close. I knew it was inevitable.

I was surprised when she made it to another weekend, but I was overjoyed to have a little more time with her. When Saturday started, though, I had no idea how much would change by the time my long day would end Sunday morning.

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Living with me wasn’t Lucy’s first home. I wasn’t even her second family. I was her third home.

She first lived on a chain in someone’s back yard in a dangerous neighborhood. After she was rescued from that life, she lived in an overcrowded apartment with a couple who had far too many rescued animals, including five dogs.

When that couple had to move, they could take only three of the dogs. Someone else wanted the fourth dog, but nobody wanted Lucy. On the day before the couple had to be out of their apartment, I agreed to take her. So she lost the only people she knew — once again.

When I brought her home with me on Jan. 25, 2016, she was confused and scared. I promised her that day that she now had a home for the rest of her life.

Roughly 10 years later, that promise has been fulfilled. I lost this precious girl very early Sunday morning.

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I don’t handle emotional losses well. I never have. And every time I face another loss of someone or something very important to me, I’m a mass of confused emotions.

Tonight, I’m dreading the coming loss of my dearly loved dog, Lucy. Everyone has experienced such loss at one time or another, but even this sort of loss leaves me feeling helpless and scared.

I know why I feel this way, though — and it all starts with my mother.

I loved my mother and she loved me. That’s such a fundamental statement for a human to make that it seems a bit hollow. Everybody loves his or her mother. Every mother love her child. On some archetypal level, that’s true. But it wasn’t always so simple for me.

My mother left my family when I was 5 years old. The truth of what really happened is far more complicated, but as I grew up, all I could really internalize is that my mother abandoned me. I was too numb to what I felt to ask the real questions that swirled inside my child mind.

Did my mother not love me? Was I not good enough for her to want me? What was wrong with me?

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