Please, Just Don’t

Please, Just Don’t.

Just don’t let me see it happening in real time, God.

Just don’t turn him old right in front of me, in these small, quiet ways that no one else would notices but me.

Like the way he huffs now when he lies down, or the way he silently asks for pets, when before they were quite loud.

Just don’t trade his bright, certain movements for slow wandering and long pauses where he stands and seems to forget why he got up.

Or when sometimes I find him staring off into space, and other times he just wanders alone into the night.

Just don’t make me watch the space grow between who he was and who he is becoming.

Please, just don’t.

Just don’t make me learn the shape of losing him before he’s even gone.

And don’t, don’t leave me clues scattered through the day — in the way he lies down, in the way he breathes, in the way he doesn’t come when I call right away…

Or in the way he drools now out of the side of his left cheek.

Just please stop reminding me that time is doing what time always does.

That it is taking my dog from me. My best friend. My ride or die. My everything.

Just don’t let him look at me with the same eyes he had as a puppy, either.

Why do you do that, God?

And why do you let the nape of his neck hold that puppy smell his whole life? So, any day I can lean in and take a deep breath and be filled with memories of us, of what we’ve been together and the adventures, of him in his prime, of him leaping fences and treading water…

Why?

Why do you let that smell linger?

Not that I don’t love this… but because every version of Gauge all at once is sometimes too much to hold.

And it hurts.

And sometimes, I wish that you wouldn’t make me remember how far we’ve walked together.

Because measuring the distance of where we’ve come together with that of what we have left, is painful.

And I don’t want to do that. But I feel l am doing that every day.

So please just don’t.

Just don’t make me witness his decline. Don’t take him from me in these sharp painful cuts.

But then how else could it be, right?

I guess my request is, God…

Please don’t take Gauge from me.

Please, just don’t.