I cradle a dear friend

I cradle a dear friend while the sun shines on us. My back is against a stucco wall that forms one border of a terraced fruit orchard. It’s late fall, so the leaves are dying, yet the sun radiates heat and makes it feel more like late summer. Hummingbirds titter in the branches and a soft breeze stirs the dry leaves so that they rustle lightly. The ground is littered with fallen leaves that fold and curl in on themselves.

A river flows in me as I contemplate our last farewell. We have a ritual—when the day ends, we face the sun and give thanks for another day of sun and light and life, and we wish the sun farewell, saying that we will greet the sun again on the morrow. But of course, for my friend there will be no tomorrow, and as I face that fact, I am as a stone sinking into deep water.

I wish in vain for some way to reverse the decay in his body. Time becomes elastic, stretching in single moments when I hold him to my breast, and then racing by when I notice the time. Every minute takes us closer to farewell. Every moment, we are one step closer to our last.

I cannot fathom it. Will life not be much emptier without my friend? So many things I am accustomed to, so many memories and habits and rituals and routines—they all fade and vanish when he does.

There are other friends. But none like him.

For a while, it was me and him. The two of us. Then there was a third, and a fourth, and then it was just us once again. Now, we have been three, for the better part of seven years. We three, together. And even within that, there was me and him—how many hours did we run and walk in nature? How many times did he accompany me on hours-long walks at the beach and on the bluffs. How many stories did I write with him at my side? We have always been together. Done so many things together.

How strange then, that this thing, he must do alone?

I will be beside him, but at the liminal moment, he must fade beyond the veil of life without anyone. We all must die alone. What a strange thing.

Two hours remain to us. In his last moments, I can see that he is ready to go. I sense it. We know it is the end, but that does not mitigate the solitude I feel in imagining life without my friend. I have ever cherished our adventures. And he has always been my reason for venturing out so often. What happens when he is gone? Shall I venture out alone? A man walking in a wood, with a companion by his side—that differs from a man walking alone and without a friend.

During my adventures, it is my custom to write; I accomplish this by speaking aloud into my handheld device, which captures my words and thoughts. This nearly always results in funny looks. But when a passerby inevitably notices the slender companion trotting along with me, all judgments are rendered unwarranted, and my weird ways are instantly forgiven. My friend gave me cover to be my strange self. He explained so much about me to others without ever uttering a single word.

Logic serves to remind me that death is a part of life. There are none for whom death does not come. Yet, the specificity of this death, on this day, for this friend—defies logic and keeps me asking whether there isn’t something I can do, here at the end, to keep him going just a little longer. It keeps me asking why it must come so soon, why it must come at all. I bemoan every minute that ticks away and brings us closer to parting ways, brings him closer to oblivion. What a strange need is death—the need to shed the body and cease life's function, the need to fade into nothing-and-everything.

What a strange thing, too, is life after the death of someone great. Strange: that we must carry on and move forward in the wake of a dear friend’s passing. Strange: that as we go along, a particular memory of that friend can strike like a lightning bolt, and bring us to our knees.

So, I cradle my dear friend while the sun shines on us, and try my best to ready myself for the sorrow of our last goodbye.

When the time comes for us to send him off, we know that he is ready to be done with life, because his body is shutting down its functions.

When the time comes, I can’t believe our blessings:

Our friend always loved to bask in the sun, and on this sorrowful day, the sun had gone away. But when the moment for his departure came, the clouds cleared, and the sun shone directly on us, on the little place we had chosen for this last, brutal, sublime task. Another blessing took the form of the man who came to help us lay our friend to rest. He was kind and non-judgmental, and extremely supportive and professional. And a further blessing lay in the fact that Sebastian’s last few days, and certainly his last few hours, were characterized by fatigue—not by pain. He presented no signs of suffering—he simply slept quietly and peacefully while we cuddled him and moved him about, waking here and there simply to look at us for a moment, and when we set him outside to take care of his business. He was spared the pain and suffering that often accompanies death, and I can’t imagine a bigger blessing.

When the time comes, the moment crystallizes, time slowing to an unimaginable pace. My wife and I cradle our friend between us, facing the sun, whose light bathes all of us with molten gold, and glints off my friend’s beautiful fur like gold leaf and filigree. The long, graceful snout, the doe-y eyelashes gently laying like feathers over his closed eyes, the epic hound-ears framing his little face—all aglow in the sun. He still breathes; I can just feel his faint heartbeat. Tears streak my wife’s face, and mine. When she speaks, I hear timeless sorrow in her voice. Everything is slow, slow. We squeeze him, hold his bundled body as close as we can. I curl my fingers over the contours of his little hips, tucking in the gray towels that surround him so that he is swaddled.

I thank him countless times, for countless moments and for countless gifts.

And I wish in vain there were some way to evade this, to elude death, to abscond with our friend somewhere where he cannot be found by fate. But this time, logic wins.

The doctor comes. He makes sure that we are ready. He reassures us. The solution he carries in the syringe is pink—a soft pink liquid, like Kool-Aid or some festive summertime drink. The doctor finds a tiny vein in my friend’s tiny arm and plunges the needle in. I watch the metal pierce his beautiful golden coat. I watch the doctor press the plunger, and the fluid disappears into my little friend. After wrapping his little arm with a pastel bandage—as if our companion had simply donated blood, or gone for a flu shot—the doctor produces his stethoscope to listen for our friend’s heartbeat.

After another moment, he confirms the passing of our dear friend, whom we called Sebastian. We cling to him for another moment, steal one last look at his little head, steal a few last kisses upon his brow and upon his hound-ears. I say aloud, “He is gone,” because if I do not say it, I know I will not believe it.

And for the last time ever in this life, we cradle our dear, little friend, while the autumn sun shines upon us—our last farewell now past, and his life ended, already receding into the halls of memory.