Anna Hamilton | Writer

Winston and I enjoying each other’s company.

Astute readers will probably notice that I haven’t been around as much on the various social media widgets the last couple of weeks, nor publishing things to either this blog or Disability Intersections. Why is that? Well, it’s because, like most people’s 2016, my 2016 kind of sucked. My year-long case of an “Oh, FUCK, seriouslyyyyy?” facial expression started in January, when David Bowie died, and made its horrendous curtain call last month, when my 17-year old Yorkie, Winston, had to be put to sleep due to a sudden illness. Like a canine version of David Bowie, Winston lived a long and interesting life, although I can’t say that he ever wore makeup, dressed up like a space alien, or went on tour with Trent Reznor at any point, since he was a dog and not an influential British musician and fashion icon.

I spent a large portion of 2016 trying to not fall into a spiral of general grumpitude amidst various medication changes — and a lot of failures on that score — for chronic pain and fatigue from fibromyalgia, while also attempting to make progress on a humorous essay book, for which I hope that a publishing house that’s not aware of my immediate reputation will be interested enough to purchase (eventually, that is, since I need to finish the damn book first). As far as my Resting EVERYTHING SUCKS AND HOW CAN THINGS GET WORSE? SHOW ME, I DARE YOU Face goes, I thought Donald Trump winning the U.S. Presidential election was going to be my personal feeling-like-shit apex this year. It was not.

For those of you who have lost someone — human or non-human companion — who was important to you and whom you’ve known for a long time, you know what grief is like and how it makes you feel like someone froze your soul, shredded it in a snow cone machine, and then served it to the world’s brattiest child, with an extra-tepid topping of your snot and tears. But if you have not experienced this (yet), allow me to outline exactly what happens afterwards.

“But Anna,” you might ask. “Winston was a dog. How hard could it have possibly been?” First of all, you might want to shut your face hole, and consider that you are very lucky that losing someone close to you has not happened to you. Second, Winston was 17 and a half when he passed away. Dude was with me for over half of my life. That is a lot of time. When you have that amount of time to get to know someone — in this case, a small creature who depends on you for food and basic needs and such — they become a part of your life. Their quirks and personality characteristics make themselves known to you, and accommodating their habits becomes part of your daily routine. Yes, animals can and do have personalities; I know I sound like such a Bay Area hippie here. Winston was more than a furry and elderly roommate. He was a friend — a friend who spoke a different language, depended on me to take him outside to go to the bathroom, and had his annoying moments, sure, but a friend nonetheless.

Winston also dealt with chronic pain issues in the final years of his life. In early 2016, my partner, Liam, and I found out that Winston’s arthritis in his back had progressed to the point that he would need to be put on pain medication. And not just any pain medication — our vet determined that Winston’s pain would need to be managed with tiny doses of opioids.

The irony — and unintentional hilarity — of both Winston and I being on opioids to control our respective chronic pain conditions does not escape me.

A bunch of other health issues also came up during his last few years, including a heart condition that made him cough (honk, really) loudly at night, eye issues that left his little face constantly goopy and some of the hair near his eyes in his eyes because of the thickness of the goop, various digestive problems that would cause him to throw up silently, or poop either too much or not enough, and a nerve problem in his back that caused one of his tiny hip joints to pop in and out of its socket randomly. Despite all of his health problems, Winston remained a fairly happy little dog until the end of his life. The only time that I saw him visibly unhappy was when his hip joint would pop out, rendering him unable to walk or stand; this got better once the vet increased the daily dose of pain medication. The eye goop also proved to be an issue, as Winston did not like having his face touched — but we needed to touch his face to remove the goop with Lids and Lashes. No matter how much we cleaned his face, the goop came back.

Winston’s kidneys began to fail, he became extremely dehydrated, and he stopped eating — losing over a third of his body weight in two days — and so, seeing how distressed he was and realizing that he wasn’t going to bounce back from this, Liam and I made the decision to have him put to sleep. The process itself was peaceful, but difficult to watch. Liam and I held Winston’s little paws as the medication took effect, and as Winston passed, I felt like the Yorkie-shaped hole in my heart would never heal.

The aftermath has felt like someone has taken a giant melon-baller to my soul and scooped a large portion of it out. My chronic pain issues got worse in the week following Winston’s passing, and the fibromyalgia-based fatigue became so severe that there were several days in a row that I slept for more than 12 hours at a time, getting up only to eat or use the restroom. When you’re asleep, you can’t cry. You also can’t feel your chronic pain weighing on you like a giant barbell.

It’s been more than a month, and I’m still feeling somewhat fragile from this loss. There are a lot of things I miss about Winston; I miss his little grunts and loud snoring, his weird salty smell, and his habit of nosing my bare leg whenever he needed attention. I miss coming home and seeing him “dance” with excitement; if he was in his bed and couldn’t be bothered to get up when he heard the door open, he would lift his head up, grunt or whine in acknowledgment, and wag his tail very slowly to welcome me home. I even miss some of his habits and quirks that annoyed me, especially his method of waking me up in the middle of the night to let me know that he needed to go out, his “give me attention NOW” grumbles that often sounded like air being let out of a balloon, and his penchant for walking into mud puddles and then leaving gross paw prints wherever he went. He was a unique little dog with a personality that belied his small size (six pounds at his largest).

And so, with Winston gone, I am still experiencing the aftershocks of grief. Just when I think I’m making progress, I’ll see something or hear something — you would not believe how often I’ve mistaken some outside noise for a little dog whine or sigh — that reminds me of him, and then the full force ofhe’s not here anymore will slam into me like the kickback of a rifle. Lately I’ve felt like grief is just hovering around the edges of my life like a conniving, evil imp, or a bunch of them; I can play Grief Imp Whack-a-Mole all I want, but the imps are still going to be there no matter how fast I’ve become at whacking them back into place. Part of me does not want to admit to being this vulnerable, or to missing Winston this much, but the other part of me knows that I have to acknowledge what a huge loss his passing has been.

I’m trying to work through this grief in a healthy way — and to resume working on my book — because I know Winston would have wanted me to keep doing stuff. If he were here right now, perhaps he would be by my side as I type this, snoring away or repeatedly positioning his head on my leg until he was perfectly comfortable. I am trying to move in the right direction for 2017 — however slowly, as Winston did.

Winston in his bed.

This piece was originally published on Medium.