"Are you still sad about Sumo, mommy?" The dog I mothered for a decade, that brought me together with my husband, and sat loyally by my side, keeping me company and making me feel safe during Dan's overnight business trips, is now gone forever.
***
After returning from a glorious vacation, we found our once fierce and proud 'big guy' had withered away. Dan laid him at the base of our stairs - he couldn't walk - and told me to come and look. When Sumo saw me, he took great pain to raise his head, but he didn't wag his tail - his standard greeting. His breathing was laboured, and quite shallow. We both knew right away something was seriously wrong, and Dan rushed him to the vet.
Sumo made it through the night, but his chest x-rays revealed he would never be coming back home with us. Dan and I were in shock, and heartbroken. He was no spring pup, at eleven and half years old, and his stomach had begun to contort in a way that would require surgery - a surgery his aging body could no longer handle, with little to no chance of success. We'd already decided we wouldn't put him through that. On top of his stomach twisting, he had a severe case of pneumonia, from having particles back up into his lungs from vomiting. He'd only really been sick a day or so before we got him back from the kennel, but as the vet laid out his condition before us, there was only one logical and humane conclusion. The man who runs the kennel we always took Sumo to called us three times to check in the day we brought him home. You could tell he felt awful, and cared almost as much as we did. This was nobody's fault.
And so, we made the difficult, but clear decision to put our dog Sumo to sleep. Dan and I were both in tears when we brought the girls to the vet's to say our goodbyes. On his pain meds, Sumo managed to wag his tail, one final time. Clumps of his black fur fell off in my hand while I pet him, as I tried to shake the words of broken promise I'd whispered earlier that morning before the x-ray results, "It's okay Big Guy, we'll be back later to come and take you home." I wish desperately we could have taken him home, but to do so would have meant to let him die in pain and discomfort.
The night we put him down we were lucky enough to have a welcome distraction from our grief. An evening we wouldn't miss: our local World Down Syndrome Day party, and so we were surrounded by the love of friends and family, and arrived home late that night too tired to do anything but sleep.
The next morning, I spent hours pouring through pictures. I watched our family form over the years, and felt the deep loss of one of its members. When we first had children, I worried over how Sumo would behave around them. He'd earned himself a bad reputation with children early on by chasing a child down the street, and when Dan and I were dating, Sumo nipped a toddler - totally unprovoked - leaving a small bruise on her tiny arm, without breaking the skin.
Dan and I often laughed, looking back on the memory of his neighbour knocking on his door, and handing us a newspaper clipping, "Um, I think this might be about you." The headline read, "Police Seek Man: Dog bites girl, 2". The description of the man fit Dan's medium build, but the dead give away was the description of the woman who accompanied him, with the small black and white dog. That was Dan and I to a tee. Before children, we used to walk our dogs together for hours. The toddler was okay, but her parents realized after we'd parted ways that they never asked if Sumo had his rabies shot. We got in contact with police, and all was fine, but from that time on, Dan and I decided Sumo could never be trusted around a child again - it wasn't worth the risk.
When Ariel came along, I soon realized Sumo saw her as a part of his pack, and Elyse has since climbed all over him, without incident or complaint. In fact, he loved our children, and all of our family, and always came to lay where they were playing, and where the people were.
While Dan was Sumo's original owner, Oreo was my dog to begin with. As I scrolled through pictures, there were so many of her nestled into Sumo, or laying beside him on the grass. I agonized over how she might grieve the loss of her companion. How do you tell a dog their best friend is never coming back?
That night, as Dan and I did some cleaning up, I took Sumo's food bin down to the garage. I still haven't had the heart to move Sumo's large bed, as Oreo continues to lay on it. I didn't want Dan to have to keep looking at Sumo's food every time he went to feed Oreo and take her out in the morning before work. I thought we had cried all of our tears for the evening, but after saying goodnight, Dan let out one last sniffle.
"What is it sweetheart?" I asked.
"I just wish I could put my arm around him, and give him one more hug." he said breaking down, "I didn't want to put his stuff away." With or without his few belongings, I see ghosts of Sumo everywhere. He still follows me into every room. I will never forget him.
***
And so, I looked at my eldest daughter, and I told her the truth.
"Yes, sweetheart, I am sad about Sumo dying. When someone or something that we love dies, we think about them for a long time afterwards, because we really cared about them, and we don't want to forget them."
Ariel considered this carefully, and added, "Well mom, when we think about Sumo we can bring him back to life. And when we think about him, and draw his picture, that will make people happy to remember him by, and then he can come back to life." (Ariel had drawn a picture of Dan with our two dogs when he had been initially sad and worried - before we actually knew Sumo had to be put down)
I worried Ariel hadn't fully grasped the notion and permanence of Sumo's death, but she chattered on.
"And maybe, to come back to life, we could get a new baby dog? One that I can hold in my hands, something sweet and little, like this."
She showed me the imaginary miniature dog that would fit in her palm.
"You mean, a puppy?" I asked.
"Yes." She answered. "Maybe that would make us happy - to get a new Sumo puppy?"
"Maybe one day sweetheart."
And now I believe that she does understand that Sumo, as we knew him, is never coming back. In her own way, she is coming to terms with it by finding ways of remembering him, as we all must do. Her something sweet was meant to heal. It's going to take time.
The picture on the left is of Sumo, Dan and Oreo, and the picture on the right is Dan between two flowers. "I made this so that daddy can be happy." Ariel told me. (As a funny side note: I made the rookie mistake, thinking it's Easter time, of first asking Ariel if the dogs were chicks? She looked at me in disbelief, as if disgusted, and said, "No, mom! Why would you even say that?" My mistake. Her explanation was much better)
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