Roxy, 2018.

I remember being so annoyed when a friend referred to her dogs as her children years ago.

You can’t leave babies at home all day while you go to work, I thought bitterly.

I was really struggling then, trying to balance working my business with a preschooler, a toddler, and a new baby. Our pets had taken a back seat in our Minivan of Life. They were fed and watered, litter box changed as often as it got stinky, and the dog was let out in the backyard as often as she whined to relieve herself.

My cat would curl up behind my head whenever I'd relax on the couch and while I slept — his loud purring reverberating in my ears. And the dog would lean hard against us on the couch — she never weighed more than 45 pounds, but it always felt like she weighed at least double that when she’d snuggle. She slept between my knees every night back in Florida (before I got white bedding in Seattle which didn’t do well with a black dog. Not that I wanted her in the bed anymore now that we lived in a big city anyhow). And since our third child, that was about as much attention Roxy-the-dog and Bubba-the-cat got from me.

When it came time to sell our house in Florida, we contacted loved ones to see if they could at least take our anxious cat throughout the home renovation period. We knew he'd have to go somewhere else for showings too, and he was not one to travel.

I asked my dad if he could take Bubba and Roxy during the renovations and house selling process, but since his dog had recently been attacked by a larger dog, he thought it best not to traumatize him and take on a (medium, but) larger dog like Roxy. But he would take the cat though, as long as Bubba and his dog got along.

Tearfully, I packed up all of Bubba’s belongings and ushered him into a cat carrier. He mewed obnoxiously the whole way, and I remember thinking, there's no way he's going to make it to Seattle without being unconscious for the whole trip.

After leaving Bubba with my dad and spending a half hour crying in the car before being able to drive off, my heart felt as though I was, in fact, giving away one of my children.

Nearly a month later, our house was on the market and I was in the process of getting our pets cleared for travel.

Since the official move to Seattle wouldn't happen until early summer, air travel was unavailable because it would be too hot for the pets in cargo, so they would have to be transported via roadways.

I scheduled them and was told they both would need to get signed off on by a veterinarian for travel. And just around the time our house got several offers in, the vet informed us there was too high a risk for Bubba to travel cross-country. They doubted he would survive the trip, and advised against trying.

I think deep-down I knew it the day I dropped him at my dad's place that it would be the last time we’d share a home together.

I visited Bubba weekly with at least one of my kids, and each time it's like my brain would coach my heart to, little by little, put some distance between myself and Bubba. 

After my mother’s passing in 2005, I swore to myself I’d never let anyone or anything get too close to me. I realized then that the loss of a loved one is too deep a cut for me to ever fully heal from. Yet at one point I had three dogs and four cats, and Bubba and Roxy were the last remaining fur-babies after finding homes for the other rescues. 

(Then add a husband and three kids, and I set myself up for a world of pain.)

After multiple failed attempts to find Bubba a loving home, dealing with plenty of people who went on my ads just to tell me how disgusting I was for trying to re-home "a family member," and how I “should be ashamed" of myself; my dad said Bubba and his dog grew close, and that he would keep the cat.

I felt relieved but also depressed to be giving up my furry companion of twelve years. But my dad was a good pet parent, and I was grateful Bubba would stay in the family.

Roxy's trip to Seattle, unfortunately, would be a month after our house sold. Myself and my youngest who was yet to start preschool arrived two weeks before my husband and older two kids joined us, and it was another four weeks after that before the pet transport company would even be able to pick Roxy up.

Thankfully a kind neighbor agreed to watch her for three weeks before her vacation, then would have to take her for boarding at the doggy day care we took her to during most showings.

It felt like a blink of an eye with how fast everything moved along, although I’m sure it didn’t feel that way to Roxy.

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law helped me set up our new place before the rest of the family arrived two weeks later. 

After they got here, we took the opportunity sans-pet to do as many touristy things we could handle while the old neighbor watching Roxy updated us regularly on how she was doing.

The weeks flew by, and about four days after getting picked up by the transport company, Roxy arrived in Seattle. She was so happy to see us, and although the freedom to just leave the house all day with the family and without having to worry about pets at home was nice, it was so great to have her back with us.

That six weeks was the only other time in my life when I didn't have a pet in my entire life. And, right now, while the grief is so visceral, I say with confidence that I can't go through this again.

It was so sudden, yet also not. Like someone you love having inoperable cancer but still chugged along. Then one day you get a call that they died in a car accident, or they had their “best day ever” and the next day they dropped dead.

I can't say this grief is akin to losing a flesh-and-blood child (and I certainly never want to experience that to compare the two), but this loss hurts to my core.

My brain hasn't yet grasped that she's actually gone. 

I see her out of the corner of my eye where my oldest daughter leaves her black backpack on the kitchen floor, for some reason (Roxy’s favorite place to be for all the dropped crumbs whenever she heard me wiping down the countertop). I step outside my bedroom in the morning and expect to hear the thwap-thwap-thwap of her tail on the couch; or her little brown eyes looking up at me from the spot where her bed used to be.

It took months for me to truly understand that my mom was gone and never coming back after she passed. Even seeing her refrigerated body at the funeral parlor wasn't enough to convince my mind that she’d never walk back through the front door again. 

I had to move out to finally get my brain to register that she wasn’t coming back.

And with both, we knew it was coming eventually. My mom lived for three and a half years with inoperable lung cancer after being given three months to live by doctors. And Roxy, upon arriving in Seattle three and a half years ago, had developed a growth on her throat in the six weeks we didn’t have her. 

After Roxy’s surgery, the doctor said the mass seemed to be contained, but it was malignant. Cancer. And although treatment may extend her life, it would be a miserable process for her, and there was no guarantee that it would extend her life. He advised that we enjoy the time we had left with her.

And much like with my mother, Roxy defied the odds, living much longer than expected. I’m proud to say that the life we gave her here was far greater than the monotonous, at times indifferent one we had back in Florida.

I am so grateful to my husband who was able to be there with Roxy, holding her in her final moments. She declined so fast that last day, I am content knowing that her passing was peaceful and swift.

But I could not have done that — I could not have been there with her in her final moments, just like I couldn’t be there in my mother’s.

And, at this time, I don't think I can go through this again.

My husband picked up Roxy’s ashes this weekend, and I’ve been a wreck again ever since.

She was my companion for fourteen years.

She put up with my asshole cat. She dealt with my oldest as a toddler, relentlessly tormenting her. She fell in love with my husband shortly after I did, and quickly became his dog thereafter. Then she endured two more kids coming along, stealing all of our attention.

But she had a good life and a family who loves her. And a human-mom who will forever miss her sweet face.

Roxy, 2020

My best,

Sara