A sad day, with a hard lesson.

So I haven’t posted in forever, I guess I’m too easily distracted or maybe I feel that nothing major worth reporting has occurred.

Well, on August 3, 2018 I had to put my best friend for the last 12 years down.  His name was Big Jim.

Big Jim came into my life as a complete and total accident.  He literally fell out of the sky and landed in my lap.   Actually, I was outside looking for my parents’ beagle when a guy pulled up and asked if I was looking for a dog.  He then threw a beagle at me out of his car window.  So there I am, standing in the street with a broken, beaten beagle.  I loaded him up and took him to a vet, I wasn’t sure why but I knew it was the right thing to do.  It turns out Big Jim would be the most expensive, “free” dog I’ve ever owned.

We had some good adventures over the next 12 years.  We traveled, we explored, we became part of a family with a wife and kids.  Big Jim through it all was with me, good times and bad times.  

I slowly realized over that 12 years that Big Jim had saved my life.  My old career had made me distant, heartless and angry.  That attitude and a lack of direction was leading me to a bad spot.  However once I met up with Big Jim it all changed.  I made him a promise that first night, if he would pull through, I’d make sure the rest of his years with me would be absolutely awesome.  I kept that promise to him.  When we added another dog to our family he was a bit perturbed, but then he grew to like her.......well, tolerate her.  I made it a point through his life to consider how my actions and choices would affect him.  My wife, like Big Jim, learned to tolerate me.  

About a year ago Big Jim began to slow down.  He didn’t enjoy walking, he slept a lot and somewhere along the way he had begun to turn grey with age.  I’m pretty sure, now that I’ve thought about it, that I was in denial about Big Jim.  A part of me believing we would have adventures together forever.

About a week and a half ago, before this post, Big Jim quit eating.  He lost weight and he began swelling in his abdomen.  I immediately knew it was his heart, the symptoms were just too textbook.  A part of me was convinced that Big Jim would pull through this and we’d be merrily on our way.  The Tuesday before he left me, he got up and tried to climb in my lap.  He then did something he hadn’t done since I first caught him.  He hugged me.  It was that moment that I knew our time together was done.  I sat there, I held him and I cried.  I then began to bargain in my head, what could I do to just give us more time.

In the end, I took him to his vet.  God bless the man, he racked his brain to think of something but we both knew Big Jim’s time with me had come to an end.  And that was that.  Big Jim went to sleep at 11:50am on August 3, 2018 and never woke up.  It was quick and it was painless.  I owed him that much.

That afternoon I sat in my office trying to wrap my head around a life without him.  I thought maybe I was a bad person again for having put him down.  Something Kevin Smith, the movie director, had said about his dog being put to sleep kept coursing through my head:  “I love you so much, I have to kill you.”  Sadness and guilt, that sums up how the rest of my day went.  Dwelling on what had happened, what could have happened.

It then dawned on me that Big Jim had one last lesson for me.  I was thinking of the people, places and things in my life that I valued the most.  It made me think of the son my wife and I had lost almost 4 years ago.  I then realized that during the events of losing my son and losing my dog I had done the same thing.  I kept trying to bargain for more time.  The phrase that sticks out the most is “please, just 5 more minutes.”  Who was I bargaining with?   I guess it was a combination of myself, God, whatever higher power you may believe in, the universe.

And that was the lesson I think Big Jim was sent to teach me, the most precious thing in life isn’t money, success, fame, you name it.  The most precious thing in life is time.  Time and how you use it.  I’m pretty sure fate sent Big Jim to me for a reason, and maybe that lesson was it.

I’m still mourning for Big Jim.  I woke up this morning and looked down at the foot of the bed expecting to see him.  I never thought I’d ever love a dog as if it were a human, but it happened.  My hope now is that I take the lessons he gave me to heart.

I love you little buddy, I owe you one.