I truly don't know.
When I was young I was very mean to a few animals, taking simple pleasure in being able to beat-up something that couldn't fight back. Now that I'm older and allegedly wiser, I'm horrified by what I did because I do love animals and I understand why I did it.
I remember a few times when I was nearly psychotic with rage and took it out on my dog only to lose him two years later to cancer at the age of three. How that dog could ever forgive me I don't know, but he did. On the day he was euthanized due to terminal cancer, my mother called me at work and said he was now in pain and that she called the vet. She told me that the vet was on his way and that I wouldn't have to be there.
It was the first time I ever put my foot down with my mother and I told her in no uncertain terms that the dog was my property and that nothing was to be done until I got there. I brought this dog home, he was my only source of wholly and completely devoted love through two psych hospitalizations for depression, and that I owed it to him to be there when he died. I left work early and drove home listening Judy Collins singing Amazing Grace on repeat on my tape deck. I begged the spirits of my great grandparents to take care of him until I could again, and I drove home in a cloud of tears. Dear god in heaven I loved Tristan like I have loved no other animal. I came home and he was in pain. I could see that. I beat the vet too. Seeing him hurt me but I stayed calm and strong knowing he would need it. I took him around back behind the house and my mother tried to stop me fearing the walk would hurt him but I shouted at her, "Don't say a word. Nothing is decided unless I decide it." She was aghast that I would countermand her like that and she began babbling about how the doctors said this and that and everything else. She had decided and that was that, reminding me how she drove my dog 70 miles into New York for surgeries and chemotherapy at the finest animal hospital in the world at enormous cost. It didn't matter. Tristan was my dog and as his life was my responsibility, I would decide if this was the time to end it or not. I sat down next to Tristan, away from everyone and talked to him. He had stopped eating that morning and the look on his face just told me everything. I promised him I would stay with him until the end and my great grandparents would take care of him in the other world. He just licked my face, again, always concerned about me.
The vet came, I held him in my lap, and he passed away gently and quickly. I stroked his hair, whispered to him, and just offered every comfort I could just as when I took him home for the first time as a puppy.
I am always completely astonished at the capacity of that dog's grace. I didn't deserve him, I didn't spend as much time as I could with him, I didn't always treat him as a life that had only me to depend upon and to this day I feel a pain in my chest when I think of it and then remind myself that he forgave me all that for what little love I could give him.
If there is a heaven, then when I die, he's the very first thing I want to see. I said it then, over 15 years ago, and I still say it now. I hope to say it until the day I die.
Today I have two wonderful dogs whom I adore and have treated far better than I ever did Tristan. I got two dogs because I don't think I could stand to tolerate the death of one without having another to console me. That's the very real, and perhaps, selfish reason, but I couldn't think of having another dog until just two years ago; the pain of the loss, and my own failings as a dog owner, were too great.
I still have Tristan's collar and it's kept in a special wooden jewelry box I inherited from my grandfather. It has a picture of my beloved great aunt, a flower from my grandfather's funeral, and one or two other special things. On occasion I take it out and hold it, feeling its smoothness from his oily coat (he was part Chesapeake, part yellow lab), smelling just a faint whiff of his scent, and knowing that short of a grave in the side field at my mom's house, it's all I have left beyond the memories.
Though I won't deserve it, I know Tristan will give me a pass.
