Incessantly recalling memories of high school, I’ve been contemplating how I choose to remember events in my life lately. Of course, the only ones I seem able to recollect are mostly self-indulgent. The rest floods back thanks to the assistance of an old scrapbook long abandoned. It’s a disturbing sensation borne of a misrepresented past, especially one so definitively gone.
And I stumble across a memory of my first assisted euthanasia. You see, before I transferred here, I was very much set on becoming a veterinarian and used to work at the office of Dr. Eads, to which my family took our five dogs.
His name was Hans, he was a graying Weimaraner, and I don’t think he could have been any older had he belonged to Father Time himself. His owner stood in the corner of the room closest to the door, which also happened to be farthest from Hans. After he refused Dr. Ead’s suggestion to keep the collar, the middle-aged man deserted, and old Hans kind of sunk into that examining table – if that’s at all possible. It bothered me then that a man could be so cowardly. It still does, though I imagine there are various ways to forget a friend.
Hans lies on the icy, steel examining table, all 140 pounds of him. First thing I notice when I approach are his eyes; they’re glowing blue, like what echoes from a pool light when children splash innocently at night. Hans doesn’t struggle, even flinch, when that unnaturally pink, viscous syrup thunders into his vein. Since I’m assisting Dr. Eads, I cradle Hans’ head in my arms, just in case he yelps in pain. I’m told it stings horribly. Hans breathes into my arms calmly for a few moments, watching me watching him, but the overdose of sedative quickly does what it’s supposed to and, after two minutes, he’s still. Dr. Eads checks his pulse and tells me he’s dead, but I already know. His eyes are flat gray.
Several things happened at this point. Hans’ bowels and bladder went with Dr. Eads as he exited the room, who left me cleaning duty. But that wasn’t the big deal, really. I cleaned that up all the time. Dr. Eads also gave me packaging duty: stuffing Hans into a heavy-duty, red plastic bag, tying and labeling it for cremation, and then heaving the 140-pound coffin into a freezer for later pickup. It was red because of Hans’ weight. They’re all color-coded that way. Forcing limbs into a red trash bag is hard enough, especially when they don’t fit just so and necessity mandates they do somehow; but that wasn’t the worst part either.
Pure, syrupy rage bubbled furiously in my chest as I closed that bag on a pair of glazed, gray eyes, now emptily gazing at nothing. That was the toughest part. Sealing the top with industrial-grade tape. That was rough. Before I did that though, I stole a memory. If the owner was too chickenshit to bestow upon Hans a loving caress and familiar, smiling face as he died, and I had to look back at those shimmer-blue eyes instead, then I deserved something for it. There was no compensation for what I saw; no charge for the delegation of sorrow. So, I stole a memory and took it home, and later hugged my dog with it in my hand, pleading God never to demand such maturity from me again.
I quickly close the scrapbook on Hans’ dog tag, silencing the memory at its source, allowing it to quietly fade. It’s good to keep it there, close but out of sight. What is it they say? Out of sight…
In several weeks I will fly back to Phoenix to, among other things, get a job. I will kiss my mother, hug my father, and probably punch both my older and younger brothers a couple of times too many. I will most likely drink more than is healthy with my high school friends, because that’s how we prove to each other that friendships are infinite and unalterable, especially ours. I will also take Nashkofye, my chocolate lab, to Dr. Eads for the last time. He’s diabetic, suffering from hip dysplasia, and though not quite as aging as Hans was, my selfishness has already gone too long. Nash’s brown eyes still glow sagaciously and, though hazed by cataracts, my bet is they’ll smile back at me when I cradle his head for the last time.
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