My Dog Lay With Me at the Hour of My Death
By: Christen O'Brien
Tags: Pets, Inspiration, Spirituality, Life, Death

My Dog Lay With Me at the Hour of My Death

She helped me survive with a new understanding of the world around us

Photos courtesy of the author.

The day I almost died, my dog was at my side. Now in her final stage of life, I pay tribute to her by sharing what she did as I lay dying, in hopes it helps others find meaning through these, and all, difficult times.

Virginia changed my life. She woke me each morning, just past dawn, and brought me into the woods, among the trees. She taught me to rise early when the world was silent and my head was silent and my heart was open.

Every day, little by little, my dog woke me from the sleepwalk that I’d mistaken for life. At first, while she investigated the forest floor, my mind was elsewhere. Staring down at my phone. Absorbed in my own thoughts.

But each time she pulled on her leash for us to stop, I began to look up. And then around. The intricate patterns of tree bark. The paintings on a bird’s wings. The way grass moves in choreography to the wind, like a symphony of energetic little children. The more I saw, the more I could see.

Each walk, she brought me deeper into the fold of what was really happening which was not on my phone or in my “life.” It was everything surrounding it.

I knew something was really wrong when the blood clot broke from my leg and rushed toward my heart, but my only thought was to bring Virginia to safety. We lived on 10 acres in the Sierra foothills, with few neighbors to help should a woman die and her dog go missing. I looked over at the mailbox at the top of our steep driveway, just eight feet away, and knew I had to tie her there. I tried to walk but with each subsequent step my legs got heavier and heavier, until my feet were cinder blocks, cemented to the road.

Unable to move, I fell to the ground and looked up again, instantly aware that my life was slipping away, yet determined not to let Virginia lose everything too. Crawling on my hands and knees across the rough pavement, each breath painful, my heart beating wildly, I gripped her leash in my right palm and held my gaze on the mailbox. Inch by inch we came closer, but when we arrived at its wooden post I could not lift my arms to tie her to it.

Just then, something overcame me — a force from within and without — and I watched as my hands looped the leash around the post, brought the end through the loop, and with all my remaining life energy, pulled to tighten the knot.

I collapsed to the ground.

I am dying, I thought.

In that moment, without any other choice, I relinquished every sense of control I’d held onto — fiercely — for the last 32 years.

Virginia then moved to stand over me, and I knew she was there for a purpose. She was not afraid or even curious as she normally would be when she sensed something unusual. It was as if she was in coordination with the universe, with what was happening. She looked outward toward the trees and the sky, obeying a command from some other place.

Then suddenly, she stepped back to my side.

What happened next will elude me for the rest of my days.

I lay on the pavement, looking up. The clouds moved across the sky with an awareness, a knowingness, that was also mine.

The sun beamed down directly in front of us, an inner light I’d always recognized as my being.

Leaves began dancing on my driveway in a swirl of colors, and I instantly felt their warmth and playfulness as my own.

The clouds moved to cover the sun, and I felt raindrops on my face, each one surrounding me with a contemplation that was… me.

There was no separation between myself and the elements moving around me. There was an instant sameness: I was the clouds, the sun, the leaves, the rain — and they, me.

All throughout, in the corner of my vision I saw Virginia there by my side. She was not looking away as she usually would from my human fixations. Instead, she looked directly at each scene unfolding before us, like she was in on the plan.

Unflinching and attuned, strangely choreographed to the show before me. Like she was part of this ensemble.

It was then that I understood what she had been trying to show me all along on those morning walks…