Thoughts On A Life Upended

Up-up-up – that was the command you had to use to get Shifu to jump up onto or go up anything – the couch, the bed, the stairs. If you only said one “up” it didn’t work. Sara had conditioned him to need all three… Up-up-up.

I’m really going to miss saying that command. I had to say goodbye today to Mr. Shifu Jet Li Thompson, who was his mama’s favorite “little dog”, as she liked to call him. I liked to remind her that Shifu was not so little, at 55-65 lbs or so during the time I knew him. Shifu accompanied Sara through the last 9.5 years of her life, and Sara was his person, 100%. When Sara died he found himself in the unfortunate club of pets who have outlived their people, which goes against the natural order of the universe and was not at all fair. I became his substitute person, and I do believe he loved me – but I was no Sara.

I entered Shifu’s life when he was about 5.5 years old, late October 2015 when Sara and I first started dating. I’ve heard that Shifu was a bit of a terror in his younger days, but I never really saw that side of him. Well – unless you count the two unfortunate incidents when his protective nature caused him to nip one one occasion our real estate agent and on another a good friend in the butt as they entered our newly purchased home. Really once people came inside and settled down he was okay, and in his later years he even started soliciting pets from visitors, which I’ve heard rarely/never happened when he was young.

To say Shifu was quirky would be putting it mildly. He very much liked routine and comfort. He didn’t care for new things, like the dog door we put in or the ramp I tried putting in the bedroom to help the aging dogs get up on the bed. In both case Elvis took to it pretty quickly, but Shifu never took to either. I suspect the only chance of that happening was if we spent a full weekend working with him in each case, but even that was questionable. He didn’t like car rides and would always sit on the floor of the car, not the seat. I was surprised at how quickly he adapted to sleeping in a dog bed on the floor; Elvis had a harder time with that change, though every time we tried enforcing a strict dogs-sleeping-in-the-floor-bed policy, we would eventually decide we missed their snuggles too much to be that strict.

I didn’t get the pleasure of seeing Shifu with his first doggy sibling, Tai Tai; she passed before I came into the picture, but per one of Sara’s facebook posts, Shifu would often try to jump on her back as if they were in the rodeo. However, it was such a joy seeing him become buddies with Elvis and sort of with Ember. We liked to joke that Elvis taught Shifu “how to dog” because Shifu’d had such a sheltered life up to that point. It was fun watching the two of them wrestle together. I don’t know exactly when the wrestling stopped, but it was sometime after Sara died, when both dogs started feeling their age more.

It cracks me up so much picturing Shifu and Ember. He strikes me as one of those old men who would never admit to liking something little and cute, but who secretly does like it. Ember latched on to Shifu as his surrogate parent as soon as we let him mingle with the dogs. Shifu never shooed Ember away except for when Ember starting licking his face – he didn’t care for that, but he also never really initiated affection with Ember. Ember on the other hand just looooooved Shifu and didn’t care who knew it. He would snuggle up and headbutt him, and try to groom him, and it was just so heartwarming.

I wrote previously about my experiences bearing witness to another being’s death. Although I hated to have to do it yet again, I was honored to be able to be there for this sweet, sweet pup as his time to leave this life came about. It was hard to say goodbye to Shifu, but it was important to me that I be there for him (and recognize when he was ready to go) both because I loved him and because it was something concrete I could do for Sara even though she’s no longer here with us. I wanted to do Sara proud. We really were serious when we signed the cute pet adoption certificates that Sara made up for our respective pets when we got married. We never, ever imagined that one of us would be gone a few weeks shy of our 3rd wedding anniversary, but no matter what, there was never any question that I would carry on with all our furry boys.

It sure does feel strange now that Ember and I are the only two left from our at-one-time family of six: 2 humans, 2 cats, and 2 dogs. I’m sure the next month is going to feel extra griefy – not only Shifu’s passing, but also the anniversary of Sara’s death, our wedding anniversary, and my birthday. My goal is to find and hold on to the self-compassion that I desperately need right now, along with making plenty of room for my grief since I know it’s going to be more present. I’m not sure exactly what that looks like, but I think for now I’m going to try to find a reason to slip “up-up-up” into conversation with Ember and Theo still, on occasion.