December 5, 2014
Bianca was my 10-year-old Welsh corgi. She died suddenly and unexpectedly on December 5, 2013 at 4:00 in the morning. I was not with her when she died; she was staying overnight at a veterinary clinic after the possibility of being diagnosed with leptospirosis.
My sister and I got home from ballet class to find that Bianca was unusually lethargic. She was hardly ever energetic, and yet we had never known her not to be kind, gentle, and affectionate. There were two small puddles of dark gray vomit on the floor where she sat. Bianca was never one to turn down food, and yet she did not eat or drink.
Bianca let us pet her as she had done for the past eight years. As I waited on the floor beside her, she slowly rolled over with her paws up. She looked up at me and blinked, expecting me to give her a belly rub. I rubbed her stomach covered with her soft fur, and she looked into my eyes for a good ten seconds. I wish I could have told her that it would be okay; that she could count on me to be there for her that night.
We took Bianca to a veterinary clinic where we were told that she showed symptoms of leptospirosis. Leptospirosis is a severe, often fatal disease caused by bacterial infection when dogs come into contact with water contaminated by rodents. The veterinarians sad that after running a few tests they would be able to determine whether or not she had it. They warned me that if she did, there would be a very high chance that she would die. I left the clinic that night thinking that I would be able to come back and visit her within the week; that this would not be my last day with her.
The last I saw of her was when my sister and I waved goodbye as a male nurse carried her away to the room where she would be staying that night.
I came home with my entire being permeated with a strong sense of unease. I knew that Bianca was going to die, and all it took to validate this fear was the sound of my mother getting off the phone with the veterinarians calling to the say that the test came back positive.
I should not have stayed home that night. The impact of what was to come did not fully hit me and I spent the next hour browsing through photographs I had taken of Bianca through the years. I disillusioned myself into thinking that a medical miracle would take place and that she would be okay. I don’t know if it was ignorance or indifference that let me sleep through the night, only to wake up the next morning to hear my sister and mother sobbing at what was inevitable and yet the worst news imaginable.
“We are sorry to inform you that your dog Bianca has died.”
Tears were an immediate response and yet I still did not know how to react.
The first thing I felt was guilt. Guilt from the years I did not spend taking full care of her and giving her my full attention. Guilt from not staying at the hospital the night before, when she was clearly in pain and teetering on the brink of death.
Unlike my sister, I did not sit beside her on the car ride going to the hospital. Even before bringing her to the hospital, I hated myself for quickly going up to my room to submit an English essay due that night; one that I have long since forgotten about. I did not carry her into the clinic and although I sat with her and pet her while she lay on a long table of stainless steel, I was not in the cheeriest of dispositions. I did not do everything in my power to show her that she was loved and that I would be there for her until the last few moments of her life.
Bianca was the only thing I ever really loved. She was kind, gentle, and affectionate, and not once did she ever hurt me or make me feel as if she was indifferent towards me. There were countless days and even one whole year that saw me neglecting her for my schoolwork and other things that still do not matter, and not once did she show any sings of anger and instead came running into my arms every single time.
I do not forgive myself for being selfish and passive and not doing everything in my power to be with Bianca until her last day on earth. I still think about how, if the deal with “your whole life flashing before your eyes” were true, then all she would have seen were the years she spent with my family. Save for her brief years with her parents, siblings, and her two litters of Welsh corgis, my family was the only thing she had ever really known. In the days that I did not set aside time for her, as I should have done every single day, I was too busy growing up that I did not think about how she was growing old.
I don’t know if there is any part of Bianca that still exists and yet I cannot think of her of something that is gone from the face of the earth. I try not to think of how she was alone in the last few moments before her death; alone and surrounded by strangers in a place where she had never been. I will never know what she was thinking or feeling at that time, and I wonder if she knew that I would have stayed with her if I had known she was going to die.
But none of this will ever matter because in the end, I was not there. I was not there when she needed me most.
Even if a decade has passed since Bianca first came into my life, not one day has passed when I do not think or speak of her. At times I see her running towards me as a puppy, still chubby and full of energy and barking at her reflection in the refrigerator door of our old condominium. I see her walking alongside her companion Packy in the next condominium we moved into, wagging her tail and making her way into the bedroom I shared with my sister to lay quietly on the floor where she would stay until many mornings after. I see her wrapped in a bundle of blankets one Christmas Eve when we slipped bananas and pieces of chicken under the table for her to ecstatically devour. I see her running through the fields in my village on windy days, often without a leash because she always ran straight into our arms when called. I see her now, in the house where I still live, curling up into a ball at the foot of my bedside table, keeping me company on the countless nights I stayed up until the early hours of the morning.
No matter how old or sick she was, Bianca never changed. There was nothing she could do to make us love her less.
Some may ridicule how much Bianca meant to me, and the immense pain and guilt I felt upon her death, passing it off as merely attachment on my part or something that I would naturally feel after my first experience with the death of a loved one. Only very few would understand why Bianca will never be “just a dog” and why her life and death still continues to be of great significance to me even a year after her passing.
On our last night with Bianca, we sat around the stainless steel table where she lay down whilst connected to an IV. In spite of the immense pain that she was feeling, twice did she lift up her head from between her paws and look up at us with her tongue out and the corners of her mouth retracted, her eyes twinkling as if she were the one obligated to tell us that she would be okay.
There’s nothing I can do to bring Bianca back or to change the mistakes I made as we grew up simultaneously, but I’m thankful for the fact that out of all the dogs in the world I could have had, it was Bianca who I grew up with and came to know and love. Bianca remained gentle and affectionate even in the face of death, and her selflessness and resilience is something that I have yet to learn from her in the years to come.
Bianca, wherever you are, I hope you know how much I regret not being there. There’s nothing I can do now, but I wish I had done everything for you, a thousand times over.
