  December 3, 2002 Rolf died yesterday. We euthanized him at home. I think it was almost noon. I awoke to snow on the ground for the first time and felt like it was a small gift. Rolf loves the snow, and we wondered if he would live to see it this year. We had spent the weekend plying Rolf with treats and attention, and had been rewarded with his presence in the bedroom for the last three nights. For those of you who do not fully understand Rolf's condition, his trip down the hall to the bedroom is a very big deal.
His Wobbler's Syndrome makes it difficult to keep his rear legs steady. He slips and slides. His blindness makes him even more unsteady and unsure of himself. But he came, anyway. A couple of weeks ago, we had put in a supply of Dentabones - his favorite - one for every night left to him. He would get his 'bone' right before we went to bed. We'd hear him at the end of the hall, enjoying his treat. But once it was gone, he would softly cry because he could hear us down the hall and he wanted to be with us. Most nights the desire to sleep in the same room with us was not as strong as his fear of making the trip. But those last three nights, he came. On Sunday, we also picked up the three tastiest bones we could find. One was a cornstarch 'velvet' cheese-flavored bone for a whopping ten dollars that turned out to be a bargain at twice the price.
He ate that bone with gusto and left orange shards of it everywhere he laid. We spent Sunday in kind of a slow stupor, knowing what was coming but not really believing it and certainly not wanting to talk about it. There were people who tried to reach out to us, but it was really the last thing I wanted. Even someone who loves us dearly cannot begin to imagine how huge a hole losing Rolf has left. I have spent years preparing for his death, but now that it has come to pass, I want to scream angrily at anyone who would look at me and say "He's so much better off. " No one can reach us with words, and I am tired of platitudes that ring falsely to me at a time when I feel very much abused by God Himself.
I would have given ten years of my life to give Rolf one really good year - just one fucking year. The bottom line is that I don't know that he's better off - I just know that he's gone . I guess I will drown in this for a while. I know Eug is, too. Yesterday morning he was coming from the shower and something about the look on his face made me stop and hug him - and to my shock, he began to sob uncontrollably. So we cried and hugged and rode it out. Then I took a bath and sobbed some more. We spent the last half-hour before Kim and April and Janet came feeding Rolf an entire loaf of King's Hawaiian Bread. I snapped pictures of it, feeling kind of grotesque for doing so. I had wanted to take pictures of Rolf the last few weeks and I could never bring myself to do it. Then, suddenly I am snapping pictures out of desperation, trying to hold on to something happy. I could never bring myself to photograph Rolf with Henry, because to have a marker of the time that will pass - to know that Henry will grow up so quickly and the picture would serve as the indicator of how many years we have passed without Rolf - it would make me very melancholy, I think.
Maybe I should have done it anyway. April came with Alexander in tow and Kim and Jacob and Janet followed shortly thereafter. We put a catheter in Rolf's front leg and then April went to watch the babies while Eug and I held Rolf's head, kissing him. Kim pumped the two biggest vials of blue barbiturate I have ever seen in my life into Rolf's vein, and he was gone.
Just like that. He twitched and spasmed for a few minutes afterward - the last movement I saw was the trembling of his lips - but his heart had long ago stopped beating. Eug and I broke down sobbing again and I honestly felt like something in me was dying right along with him. I had whispered to him in the seconds that preceded unconsciousness that he was a good boy and that he should go get Paavo, now. And I try to imagine that the angels and saints welcomed him for the wonderful soul he is. I try to imagine the cataracts lifted from his eyes and his body made whole and frisky and puppy-ish, again.
But what I see right now in my mind's eye is his body terribly limp and quiet, and his jowls sunk into his open mouth as he lay on his side. In a way I cannot believe we went through with it, and even though I know there was no better path, I know Eug and I both wish in a small way that we had not gone through with it. Because now we are on the other side of it, and this is a cruel place. We loaded his body onto the stretcher.
No one would let me carry him because I am pregnant, and I acquiesced. But there remains a part of me that wishes I had, because I feel like it should be me to carry him as far as I can. Eug and Henry and I drove him to the clinic to be picked up by the crematorium, and Eug and Sheila carried him into the clinic. I followed and knelt to kiss him a few times before I turned away. Eug trailed behind me and I stopped and turned back to him.
He was struggling to get it under control and failing, and so I caught him up in my arms and hugged him fiercely again and all I could think to say over and over and over again was "We did the right thing. " And for a few seconds we stood in the snow of the parking lot, him sobbing and me clutching him, scared for the power of his grief - while Henry watched perplexed from his car seat.
I get so upset at moments that I am on the verge of puking. These moments come utterly without warning. As we came home yesterday, I opened the door from the garage to the breezeway and saw Rolf's face as clearly as if he were truly there. And why not? He'd been there just a scant three hours before, looking at me (or rather, in my direction - his blindness was almost complete, I feel sure) inquisitively as I gathered up the extension cords from the leaf blower.
He peered into the garage and wondered if I was up to something, and of course, I was. And when I saw him there but not there, I stopped and cried a really ugly, noisy cry. The kind that other people are embarrassed to witness. And so I came home and I began to clean. I justified it by saying that I didn't want Henry to get hold of any of the velvet bone shards, but it was really because I couldn't stand to look at it.
I felt so fucking grief-stricken that I wanted to grind my face into the blood he'd left on the rug. Instead, I picked up the fur we'd shaved from his front leg and put it in a baggie. Then I folded up the mountain of rugs we'd bought to keep Rolf from slipping and carried them into the other room to be washed. How incredibly strange it is to have a smooth, bare floor. It accentuates the emptiness of our house, now. Eug asked me last night if I thought our own lives would go by like that - blink, and it's over. You get to the end and it's all a blur. I don't have an answer. 
