Memoir

By: 25NatalieL

I couldn’t look. I shut my eyes. It was hard. We were sitting on the couch. I sat next to my mom. My dad was on the other side of the couch and my sister, she was on a “stool” in the corner. I was sad and scared. My heart skipped a beat; it was pounding fast. I was too scared to look. I glanced briefly at my mom, and we both had tears in our eyes. I finally turned my head.

I saw our dog (Oski) lying in my father's lap. He was still, other then his eyes looking at us innocently. Suddenly, there was a knock. A vet came in with a “nurse” with equipment. I held my breath. The vet said, “It’s going to be okay. It will be quick.” She took out some of the tools and looked at our dog, then us. I briefly looked at our dog, who was still lying there. It was soo sad that I started to cry.

Again the vet repeated, “It’s going to be okay.” My mom looked at me. I looked back, tears in my eyes. The nurse put a cloth under our dog’s back leg, then stuck the wire into Oski’s back leg. We watched at she injected a liquid from a tube into him. My mom started crying next to me. Slowly and painfully I watched as our dog had stuff injected into his body.. In my head I was thinking, “It’s going to be okay, It’s going to be ok, It’s going to be okay…”

I had begun to cry, so did my mom. I glanced at our dog one more time. He wasn’t moving anymore. I couldn’t look any longer, so I just cried into my mom’s shoulder. My mom hugged me again, but I looked away.

After a few minutes the nurse came back with two magazines; one was titled something like, How to Survive after Your Dog Dies. Another one was labeled something that I forgot. Afterwards, the nurse left us and Oski together in the small room. We watched Oski lie in my dad’s lap.

I sat there with my parents, yet after a few minutes, we went to walk out the door. We looked back at Oski one last time and walked out. This happened on October 4th, 2017, which is 4 days before my birthday. Even though it probably only lasted 20-30 minutes, it felt like 2 hours. It was a hard time, especially because my birthday was going to happen 4 days later.