Reflecting on saying good-bye to River

Day to Day is going off the air in just over a week and there was a radio piece about songs of farewell today: "Day to Day, March 11, 2009 - Saying goodbye is never easy, but musician and contributor David Was shares some of his favorite farewell songs as a salute to Day to Day. The show goes off the air after the March 20 edition." I'll miss this show when it is gone.

They closed the show with the request for stories of good-byes from the listeners. This one might be too grim for their use but it came and filled my mind. My son still talks about missing River. The look on his face when he speaks of her is the same dented shape as the wound in my heart.

My River Girl was a middle-aged fluffy herding dog from the Madera County Animal Shelter. She had led me through almost three years of journeying and then left me all at once. One moment she was dancing about the living room, romping and frolicking as only she could, and the next she was seizing on the carpet; then she was still. I switched in to animal tech mode and did a response check on her. She was already gone as I knelt by her: no heart-beat, no eye-blink, no breath. My husband was suddenly there crying, asking questions that I couldn’t quite understand and my replies were all, “she’s gone”. He stroked her fur and told her good bye. It seemed a long time before I could do what came next.

Her body was heavy and warm and so still, so still. I wrapped her in her blanket and called the operations manager of the shelter where I worked. I told him River was dead. I asked if the back freezer was empty and was told that is was. I drove her to the rear parking lot of the shelter, closed for the night and quiet. I walked to the drab white freezer and stared at it. Lifting the lid the cold dead smell brushed my face. I spoke to her as I lifted her from the back seat. I somehow managed to put her body in that place.

I said goodbye settling her into a freezer. She laid there, curled in her blanket as if she was sleeping. She looked peaceful but also folded and wrong, fitted into that tight rectangular space. I was so grateful she was alone there. I have been a euthanasia tech and have put many animals down and then carried them out to the freezer. I felt every one of their deaths. Grieving for even those unknown, unwanted animals’ deaths is part of the job. There she was now. I knew her! I had welcomed her into my home and now I saying goodbye. My sorrow was for her but also for all those others that had no one to cry for their deaths.

River came to us an unwanted animal, picked-up as a stray and gone unclaimed at a county shelter. She was brought to Marin Humane through their partnership with the county shelter. She became a registered Delta therapy dog and worked with me in classrooms. From where she was when she came to live with us, without a clue as to how to be a house-dog, to the amazing ambassador for shelter animals that she became was a journey that changed the course of my life. I am forever grateful to her.