Her Life, Unleashed

She passed away on October 12th, 2013, but this was not the last memory we made together.

No, this was only the moment she was freed from the confines of her arthritis-riddled, twelve-and-a-half-year-old body, and she was now ready to experience true freedom.

If there is one thing in life that I wholeheartedly believe in above all else, it's something called synchronicity. This is often also called 'meaningful coincidence'. Basically, if you've experienced a coincidence in your life, and you thought, “There is no way things could have worked out this perfectly in a work of fiction,” then many people would call that synchronicity. It's a coincidence that is often only meaningful to you, as if the Universe itself is trying to send you a message. I believe noticing these things is a positive driving force in my life, reaffirming that things are going exactly how they're meant to.

My dog was an incredibly beautiful Golden-Retriever/Kuvasz mix, which made her long, thick fur a brilliant, light-cream color. Her undercoat caught the sunlight absolutely perfectly, and in the right angle she literally glowed, as if she were emitting light herself, like the angel she was. I believe those moments were when you could catch a glimpse of her soul.

Casey, (named after my sisters middle-school crush at the time), was with me during my most formative events in life. Given to me in first grade when I was seven years old, she stayed with me until my first quarter of community college. She was with me through my mom and stepdad moving away and my dad moving back in to our old house. She was there through my starting middle school, my sister graduating high school, many summers at my mom's house with Rottweiler friends, and two of those Rottweiler friendships.

I came from a split family, so the one consistent relationship that I had was Casey. I think she may have raised me more than anyone else did, to be honest. I learned all of my values and how to treat others from her. I've always said that she was my mother, my sister, my baby, and my best friend.

She had developed her own complex personality over those years, even more so than I ever realized while she was alive. She was incredibly patient, letting us dress her up and touch her face to our hearts content. You could take her food bowl away mid-chew and she would just look at you passively. She was so kind and loving to anyone and everyone, from letting a stray Chocolate Lab puppy sleep on her massive bed for the night when we took it in, (she slept on the floor next to it, using the bed as a pillow), to willingly lying down on the floor whenever I took out my hamster, Cookie, to play, so that she could crawl around on her body. She would do this without telling her to.

She was also afraid of deep water, thanks to my stepdad forcing her to walk through a heavy stream on the only camping trip he ever took us on. Luckily, nothing happened to her then; the current just scared her. This fear only got worse over time as she got older and arthritis set in in her hips and neck, making it more difficult to get in and out of the tub for bath time, not to mention getting out.

Speaking of bath time, it was commonplace for Casey to lie down on the bathroom floor when I would take a shower at night. Usually, I would get the shower started, she'd come in and lie down, I would put on some music, and we would just vibe for twenty minutes. (I know, I know: twenty minutes. What can I say? I was a teenager!)

I always, always picked a specifically curated playlist of some kind when getting in the shower, because my iPod Touch had over two-thousand five-hundred songs on it, over three-hundred of which were the entire catalog of my favorite band, Green Day, including b-sides, covers, duplicates, and 'secret' songs. The others were thousands of songs from other random genres. I love music, so “variety” doesn't feel like it does it justice. To this day, I still don't particularly enjoy going from ABBA to Sybreed to an internet remix of some clip on the news. So I would pick something based off of my mood, and we'd listen together.

She permeated every part of my world, so much so that things still pop up that catch my attention from time to time, even almost a decade later and having moved house.

So it was shocking and devastating to learn that she passed away while I was at a friend's house, and when I was called by my dad to come home immediately, she was still there in the bathroom.

See, the bathroom was also something of a sanctuary for her. She would go in there if it was too hot in the summer, and our air conditioner just didn't cut it, (she was naturally a fluffy girl), or when she wasn't feeling good. My favorite bathroom habit that she had, unfortunate as it was, and it rarely happened, was that if she ever had an accident on the floor, she always did it in there. We never taught her to do this. She was more intelligent than I gave her credit for.

I don't know how long I lay on the floor in the bathroom that night. I remember being angry with my dad, (who didn't deserve it), going in there and lying down, and kissing the thinning fur on her snout and her drying nose. I remember petting the underside of her ears, which was undoubtedly the softest fur on her body. And I remember observing the sheer mass that was that body, something that had never seemed so heavy until this moment.

I also remember a funny thing that I can't explain. I whispered many things to her that night, which mainly all added up to how much I loved her, and I stressed that she was welcome back at any time.

And for a moment, the air changed. It wasn't sad. It wasn't heavy. And I had the strangest sensation that she was standing right there behind her body, watching us and wagging her tail, and that it took away my pain for a brief time. Call it spirituality or grief or delusion, but whatever this was, it is still real to me.

And yet, no, this was not our last moment.

A few days later, (yes, a few days), I finally took my first shower without her. I was burnt out and somewhat empty, unsure of what I wanted to listen to because I didn't know how I felt. So for the first time, I decided to hit shuffle on my entire library of music, and when I did, I whispered loudly, “You pick the song, Baby.”

And a random Green Day song came on. Like I said, I had three-hundred-plus tracks by that group on this iPod, so I didn't think it was that crazy that it would land on something by them, and I didn't think much of it. Actually, it seemed like quite an unrelated, borderline inappropriate song given the context. It's called Having a Blast and the whole song is pretty much about a person going crazy and threatening to blow everyone up. So yeah, uh, pretty irrelevant, to say the least...

But here's the thing about synchronicity: If the Universe is trying to send you a message, you will get it if you're willing to listen, and it will usually do it in a way to catch your attention.

Which it did once the song reached its chorus.

In one brief, partial lyric, I learned both a weirdly comforting truth about life, and also that my baby had the exact same sense of humor that I did.

The chorus starts:

Well, no one here is getting out alive

I heard it, and all I could do was laugh. And I chuckled out, “Well, you're not wrong!”

That was the most I'd laughed in days, awkwardly alone in the shower. And strangely enough, it was exactly what I needed to hear. I know that might sound somewhat deranged, but hear me out. I blamed myself so much for her death and felt so guilty. In fact, if I think about it long enough, I still do at times. But it was comforting to essentially be told, 'Don't worry about it, it happens to everyone. It will even happen to you one day.' And you just can't beat the delivery of that message in my eyes.

I believe with every fiber of my being that was her. It's up for debate, but for me, it might just be the most meaningful memory I have with her. I'm also happy to report that, although this may have been the most impactful, even this wasn't the last time we crossed paths. She still visits me every now and then.

A couple of showers later, for example, the curtain moved in a way that was exactly what it looked like when she would get up to walk around, brushing up against it, and remind you that she was still there, and bored, and then lie back down. It was her way of telling you that you had been in the shower for too long. And before anyone asks, no, the window wasn't open; it was winter.

Another time, she came to me in a dream, in which she submerged herself in a river near a bridge. She was so excited, like she was showing me what she could do now!

Most recently, the day after Halloween in 2021, she and my mom's beloved dog Kaya, who passed away in 2019 and was Casey's best friend, appeared happily in the doorway of my bedroom in another dream, as if I had woken up to see them from my bed.

Getting meaning out of life or death is a funny thing, because I'm not so sure life ends with death. In my opinion, if it were just that I was thinking about her that made me dream of her, I don't think my conscience would let the dreams be so happy and hopeful. Truly, I believe that my dog is living her best life, in death. She is the most “unleashed” she's ever been.