The Bottom

  They say the lowest points in our lives are the times we are the most trainable. I suppose the logic is that when we are feeling the most overwhelmed and powerless we tend to search for reasons and answers. Saint John of the Cross wrote about "the dark night of the soul"- that place where people are given so much trouble to handle that their will breaks and they become fertile ground for whatever lesson God has in store.
  It would stand to reason that a man who wants to grow and become everything he is capable of would relish any opportunities to see life from the very bottom rung of the ladder then. I have found I much prefer the view from higher up, though. I suspect that, given the option, most people feel the same way I do. Give me happy times when things are going well and let me just stay an underdeveloped human being...
  I can't imagine the depths of despair that some people have gone to and survived. Some even seemed to come out stronger. Compared to losing a child or close loved one my calamities have been pretty insignificant. But I remember the lowest point of my life well.
  It was about 4 years ago and I was a few months into a marital separation that would result in the dissolution of my 25 year marriage. My daughters were trying to understand the reasons for that and not exactly thrilled with me and our relations were strained. I had cancer at the time but was still a month away from feeling a knot on my neck when I was shaving and beginning the tests and emotional process of discovering, accepting and treating it. I was living in a one bedroom "starting over" apartment and my estranged wife and daughters were in the big house with three little lap dogs- Lillie the schnauzer, Joe the teacup poodle and Bonnie, the bichon frise. All the dogs had their own personalities that made them endearing or, in turn, annoying. But Bonnie was the oldest and sweetest of all three. She had grown old as both the kids had grown up and her health was slipping away. The vet told us her kidneys were failing. The result was that she had become less and less able to make herself hold her head up, much less interact much.
  There came a point that Rachael, who had always claimed Bonnie as her dog, came to realize that Bonnie was in for more and more suffering the longer her living (or dying, more appropriately) dragged on. But she knew she could not be the one who could have her euthanized.
  And so the duty befell me. The strong one. The patriarch. Rachael and I discussed it and knew it had to be done and I agreed that I would take her. Rachael and her younger sister Hannah met me at the parking lot of the 24 hour vet one evening and said their tearful goodbyes to Bonnie and I scooped her up.
  I couldn't look down at her for the 30 minutes that I sat and waited for her turn. Another family was there all gathered around their little dog, crying and hugging her as they prepared to send their family pet back to some mysterious room where the vet would end the suffering and on to the great doggie beyond. I could hear Bonnie panting and feel her looking up at me expectantly but I just couldn't do more than hold and pat her.
  The vet finally came out and told me it was time and asked if I wanted to be with her for her last moments. I just couldn't do that. So I sat in the waiting room until they told me to pull my car around to the back door. They met me there with Bonnie in this cardboard casket that kind of reminded me of something you would get a 36 piece chicken dinner at Popeye's in. Then came the really awful part.
  It was really cold and had begun spitting rain and ice and I started driving towards the house that I no longer lived in. I was not welcome there but there was a reality that it was the only logical place to bury Bonnie. I called Rachael, told her it was over and that Bonnie was through suffering and asked her to bring me a flashlight, unlock the basement door and let me get a shovel.
  There was something so symbolic about burying the family pet on a cold, wet night in the yard of a home I was not even allowed to knock on the door of. I remember driving to my apartment and walking up the stairs to my door thinking I had survived the most depressing job a father can have during the most depressing time a father can go through.
  Within weeks I was diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Chemo made me feel like I was poisoned and I was soon watching my hair begin to fall out in clumps. My divorce was heating up to be a ridiculously expensive and drawn out process that was like trying to walk through quicksand. But no part of those experiences were as painful as that night I had to send Bonnie off by myself.
  Four years later my cancer is gone and my kids are getting better with the idea that some marriages just need to end. I live in the house now. And when I mow the yard I always see the spot where Bonnie sleeps now covered with green grass and vegetation. Life goes on for everyone else without the family pet or anyone else, for that matter.
  I have figured out that people usually rise to whatever challenges they are given. Sometimes there are lessons in the rising and sometimes only pain. I am not sure what all I learned that night but I really hope that night was the darkest night of my soul.

Bonnie (during happier times).