The weight I carried with me while wandering the streets of Dublin at four in the morning is difficult for me to express.
The vacation had been planned months earlier—presented as a Christmas gift that my family would share. My parents wrapped a bar of Irish Spring soap and put it under the Christmas tree for my brother and me to open. They giggled at us while our dog, Gus, bounded around the room with excitement until (after much confusion) we finally understood the implication of the gift. We were all excited about the trip—Gus just liked the smell of soap.
By the time July came around, I was ecstatic. I had never been across the ocean before, so exploring even a recognizable city like Dublin was enticing to me. The street signs were in Gaelic. I had Euros jingling in my pocket. The cars drove on the opposite side of the road. Exotic, I know. Those minuscule yet new sensations, when compiled together, built an experience that was monumentally exciting. This was supplemented further by the itinerary we had planned. I would have the opportunity to visit museums, monolithic cliffs, and even castles. I was exhausted while adjusting to the five-hour time difference, walking alongside my family as we roamed the streets of the capital, but my sleeplessness mattered little to me in the moment.
All these thoughts fluttered around in my head, but I still couldn’t explain the internal misalignment I felt. As much as I wanted to attribute that emotional weight to exhaustion or travel jitters, I already knew its source.
Gus passed away in May, a little over a month before we left for Ireland.
***
Gus joined the family over a decade ago when we adopted him from his previous owner, an elderly woman who could no longer care for him. When he first arrived, I was afraid; I had only ever interacted with the large, dark hound that lived down the street. I was (at least internally) vehemently against the adoption if it meant we would be living with something so big and menacing. Then Gus trotted through the door. Tail wagging behind him, he seated himself on a tile in the center of our kitchen and gave me an introductory lick on the cheek. This, to put it simply, was not the forbidding brute that I had expected to encounter. He was a fluffy white and brown pup, a mutt smaller than I was, whose tongue would flap about as he bounced around the kitchen. He didn’t bite me, a fact that remained true for as long as I knew him, and he always remained unaggressive despite his obsession with squeaking animal toys. As I grew up, Gus was a constant.
He was there during my transition from elementary to middle school. Most days, once I walked home from school, I would come inside and he would be waiting in the doorway ready to prance his paws around, tapping the tile underneath. I would let him out, perhaps go on a walk with him and my brother depending on the day, and then he would be rewarded with a treat. It was simple, but the sequence became one of many rituals. Apart from the walks, on most evenings Gus was looking to play. He would approach and prance (a signature move of his), and then one of us would grab a toy, chuck it across the house, and he’d race after it. Since the word “fetch” never entered his vocabulary, we would end up chasing him around the dining room table until he was tuckered out.
He would even choose to sleep at the foot of my bed rather than his own. While white dog hair invariably clung to the ends of my sheets, it was a small price to pay to grant him the satisfactory snoozes he deserved. Sometime near the start of high school, once he entered his teenage years, he stopped being able to climb the stairs on his own, and this ritual was concluded for his safety. We had to erect baby gates at the base of the stairwell, but luckily they had no effect on his unmatched snoozing capacity. His favorite daytime napping spot replaced the bed, and all was well.
Then, gradually as I finished up high school, those walks shortened. His naps grew longer. The dining room sprints grew infrequent. It wasn’t surprising. He was in his mid-teens, incredibly old for a dog his size and weight. But even as his muzzle became gray, his eyes always had this pup-like sheen to them that tricked me into believing he was still five years old . . . and I was still the eight-year-old who would play with him after school got out.
When I went off to college, I packed a framed photo of Gus to hang on the wall. However foolish it may seem, a small part of me felt wrong about leaving for school. Being eight hours away meant I couldn’t visit home as often as I wanted to. I was terrified that I wouldn’t be back soon enough to see him again, to play my part in the time-tested rituals of neighborhood walks and playtime frenzies. Even as he enjoyed his sunset years in luxury, surrounded by family, I irrationally clung to the notion that I was somehow abandoning him. I would wake up in the middle of the night to text my brother to check on him, and every time he’d find Gus happily snoring. Even so, the thought still lingered: What if his time came before I returned home to say goodbye?
But it didn’t. He still had to leave, but he waited for me. I spent that day sitting in the backyard with him on a blanket, the two of us shaded by an umbrella, petting him until it was time for him to go.
***
The weight I carried with me while wandering the streets of Dublin at four in the morning is difficult for me to express. Part of it was excitement, part of it exhaustion, part of it anticipation. Part of it was grief.
At first the weight was heavy—the car ride home from the veterinarian gave way to an indescribable numbness. As the days passed and my phone buzzed with condolences and support, I found that load easier to bear. It never got any lighter, nor I think will it ever, but with time I became more able to carry what at first felt insurmountable. Regardless, I was happy to do so if it meant remembering everything that he unconditionally gave to me—the joy, the rituals, and the dog hair on my sheets.
So in my jet-lagged daze, I carried him with me. I brought him to Ireland and walked with him around the city. I carried him to the cliffs and the castles, and I carry him with me still. After all, he was just as enthused about the trip as we were. Even if it was just about the soap.
Image Credit: Sean Ye
