I want to start by saying that I really do admire and honor the work that Caitlin Doughty does in advocating for a good death and for challenging some of the norms of the funeral industry. I also want to say that I do not know her personal situation and I could not find any information as to whether or not she has lost someone close to her. I do know, from her book Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory, that she has been interested in the funeral industry for a long time and that she suffered a trauma as a child when she saw an eight year old girl plummet to her death.

I was reading Smoke Gets in Your Eyes last night and I had to stop. Part of it is because this weekend is the anniversary of my father’s death twelve years ago, but part of it is because of the callousness with which Doughty wrote about a grieving family. She deemed the family of a nine year old girl thoughtless because they left her body at the hospital and ordered her cremation online. She had no idea of their circumstances, but because their grief and decisions were not up to her standards she judged them. This family could have been so distraught that they ran out of the hospital in tears and were so grief stricken they could not go back. They may have had other children at home they needed to care for. They could have been so distraught that they did not have the energy or the will to pick up the phone and turned to ordering online as it was less stressful. She knew none of these things, but she had the audacity to judge them.

This struck home for me because of my father’s death and the guilt I still feel over not being present for his long painful journey from metastatic long cancer diagnosis to death. I said my goodbye in weekend trips to visit my parents after spending the work week traveling. I watched him decline between trips and it was easy to use the excuse of work to avoid being present for him, but the truth is that I was scared. I was scared to watch the man who had hugged me, camped with me, and cheered me on deteriorate. It was easier to stay away and blame work for my absence. The end ultimately came the day after Thanksgiving when my mother called me at 3:00 am to tell me my daddy had died.

I raced out to be with her to support her and this was something I could do. It was crisis mode and I needed to help her with the arrangements, which hadn’t been made despite the months of his impending death. I’ve always been a fixer and functioned best when their was a crisis to solve. Unfortunately for me, what I had expected to be a clean sanitized crisis, began in my father’s death room. His body was still there, dressed in a familiar stripped shirt and sweats. My daddy looked at peace, but I knew he wasn’t there. His body was taken to the funeral home and my mother was given one last opportunity to say goodbye and she threw her body over his and sobbed. My heart broke, but I could not bring myself to touch my father’s body and I regret to this day that I did not say a true final goodbye.

I did better when my dog Luke died in 2017. In retrospect, he had acted strangely his last few days on earth. He had insisted on going with us when we took my son to the train station; he had labored his way up to my bedroom, which he hadn’t don in months; and he was more affectionate than usual. Sunday morning, I woke up to a very sick dog. He was woozy and couldn’t make his way down the stairs. My daughter and I made a sling with a blanket and carried him downstairs. After a few X-rays and an examination, the emergency vet said that a tumor in his spleen had burst and he was bleeding out internally. Surgery would be expensive and would only extend his life by a few horrible months.

I made the most difficult decision of my life and chose to have him euthanized. We were taken into a small quiet room with a rug, a couch, and an outside entrance. We were told we had as much time as we needed and to let them know when we were ready. We cuddled him, loved him, and called his beloved brother Sean so he could say goodbye as well. It was too much time and not enough time all at once. Luke refused to sit on the couch and slowly made his way over to the one patch of sun in the room. I sat beside him and stroked him and my daughter sat in front of him. We told him how much we loved him and that it was okay to go. We were there with him when he took his last breath.

Selfishly, it would have been easier to walk out and leave the professionals to take care of him, but Luke had been there for us through happiness and sadness and I could not bear the thought of leaving him alone. I could not bear the thought of him wondering where his people were as he took his last breath. Even though it broke my heart to hold him and love him those last few minutes, it was the right thing to do. And I know tha