A Job Where Things Die

Katie said to me tonight, "I'm sorry you have a job where you have to see things die." But I think that I'm not sorry. It is an honor and a privilege. I have touched on this a little before, but tonight I am very sure of one thing: the moment when a spirit leaves or enters a body is truly sacred. I spent the last 4 hours of my work day tonight sitting at the side of a special little dog named Pepper. Pepper has been coming to see us at RiverWoods for years, and has become one of "our" dogs. He has struggled with all sorts of ailments, but his loving family has supported and cared for him through them all. He came in a few days ago with autoimmune hemolytic anemia. We performed a blood transfusion today and he was doing very well until about 5. Then he just took a turn for the worse. There seems to be a moment with animals that are very ill when their spirit starts to pull away from their body. It is an almost physical change that comes over them. You can see it first in their face. The only way I can describe it is that they stop looking through their eyes. Whatever it is inside of us that makes us alive, whether we are human, dog, cat, or even lizard, can be seen in the eyes. I have watched it flicker and go out enough times now to recognize it. Pepper was still inside his dying body for a long while tonight. He was there long enough for his family to arrive and comfort him, to say goodbyes, and to look into his face while he was still looking back. But there was an instant-- a split second when the part of that soul that made him "Pepper" left. His heart was still beating, his lungs still struggled for air, but he had left, and he stopped looking back at us through his eyes. No matter what religious background I may have, no matter what belief of spirit or soul or eternity, no matter what loss and sadness I have felt, I have undeniably experienced and seen the exit of the living part of a being, whether or not the physical body died at that same moment. And that is truly an honor. I was privileged to literally hear his heart's last beat, feel his last breath enter his body, and look into his soul the last time through his earthly eyes. It is a moment of terrible emptiness-- mostly for our own loss. But I think that part of it is that we are looking into an empty, abandoned shell which was once home to a spirit we knew so well. I have the greatest reverence for life, a reverence for it's end, which truly is, I believe, only a beginning.