Finding Wonderland

I woke up the last three days hoping she wouldn't wake up. We had set the appointment at the veterinarian for today, and we knew it was time, but I still didn't want to be the one to make the decision. I wanted her to make the decision. I wanted to wake up to find that she had peacefully passed away in her sleep and then I wouldn't have to do this.

But I had to do this. Just now. I took her to the vet, had a long goodbye where I fed her chocolate for the first time in her life, and got home just now. This article will be raw.

Actually, that's the second time Lucy had chocolate. In 2015 she ate half a bag of Dove dark chocolates and I spent the entire evening searching how much chocolate a dog could eat and still be OK. Lucy was 70 lbs, and the online calculator told me that she'd be just fine. She was just fine.

I'm appreciative of those moments now. I can still remember the panic when she ran away as a puppy. Two times, actually. One time she followed a jogger home and the woman put Lucy in her yard until she could find the owners. Another time, she was picked up by animal control and we had to go retrieve her at the shelter. She could have been gone for good both of those times, but we got her back. And we got 14 great years from her.

The last six months, well, not so great. 14 is very old for a Lab. Her hips were bad. Her hearing was mostly gone. And in the last few months – sorry for all the details, but I just made the decision to have her put to sleep and I'm still dealing with the "did this really have to be done?" guilt – she reached 100% incontinence. At first we thought it was just that she didn't want to get up to go to the door because her hips, but then she started waking up every day in a puddle. Again, sorry for the details but I guess I still need convincing.

The last 24 hours, honestly, were great with her. That's what I sat down to write about. I talked to my wife on the way back home (she's away on a business trip) and we agreed that I needed to sit down and write about it. As I've always said, this blog is 83% Illini, 17% my personal journal. This is more of that 17%.

We had Lucy for 14 years. Got her when she was 10 weeks old in the summer of 2010. Our oldest had gone off to college at the time but the younger two were in high school. She was then four years old when the youngest went off to college, which means that for the last 10 years, she transitioned from family dog to just our dog (my wife and I). All of our boys eventually got dogs of their own, so her main role in life was "companion for the empty-nesters."

She loved water more than any dog has ever loved water. If we were at the family lake house, all she would do is stand on the ramp of the dock and wait for you to throw a stick in the water. She'd jump in, retrieve the stick, swim to shore, drop it at your feet, and ask you to throw it again. She would do this for hours and hours. We eventually had to limit her time swimming because she would sometimes swim so much she could barely move the next day.

So she lived a full dog life. She was at our house in the far west suburbs of St. Louis, then she was a condo dog in St. Louis taking her walks in Forest Park, then she had a big yard at our rental house in Savoy, and then she was with us here in our Champaign home. Started her life sleeping at the foot of the bed of the boys upstairs and ended her life sleeping at the foot of the bed of people spending the night before a Saturday tailgate in Champaign.

But that makes it harder when you have to make this decision. Writing about it now, I know I waited several weeks too long. She was really in poor shape. I remember sending Tyler a text recently telling him that Lucy wasn't doing well. Let me look up when that was...

August 9th. So yeah, I probably waited six weeks too long. My wife knew it was time. But I just couldn't get there until this week. Actually, I need to be honest: I was secretly hoping she'd choose to go out on her own terms. I understand now how that was selfish.

I'm rambling. I came here to tell you about the last 24 hours. And why this article is titled "Finding Wonderland." I've been stalling because I don't want to cry again.

Yesterday afternoon, the YouTube algorithm looked through my downloaded songs in Apple Music and decided that I might want to see a video from four years ago where a bunch of Broadway artists sang the song "Finding Wonderland" from the Frank Wildhorn musical "Wonderland" during the pandemic. I did want to see that video. I needed to see that video.

I have several other Frank Wildhorn musicals downloaded on my phone. Jekyll & Hyde. The Scarlet Pimpernel. Wildhorn is a composer who Broadway critics love to hate. He writes pop songs for Broadway and critics who love the darkness of musicals like "Urinetown" hate pop songs. Wildhorn has been much more successful overseas with hit musicals in Korea and Japan where pop hooks are respected and not panned.

And the man can write a pop hook. Whitney Houston's "Where Do Broken Hearts Go"? Written by Frank Wildhorn. Broadway Pop ballads like "This Is The Moment", likely used by 59% of all Olympic ice skaters the last 30 years? Frank Wildhorn.

Finding Wonderland? Written by Frank Wildhorn. During Covid lockdown, he got singers from all of his shows (both in New York and overseas) to record themselves at home singing parts to the big finale song from his Alice In Wonderland musical. This is that video:

A massive thank-you to the YouTube algorithm for sending me this. I needed it yesterday. Something about the song put me in the right frame of mind for all of this. The story of Alice In Wonderland is one of childhood fantasy (the rabbit hole, The Mad Hatter, The Queen Of Hearts). The song speaks to that, and I needed my frame of mind to shift to "childhood wonder" these last 24 hours.

I listened to that song at least... 35 times? That's probably embarrassing to admit. But each time the tears would come – the dread of what I had to do today – I'd play the song and go down the rabbit hole to view my dog through the eyes of a child. They say dogs keep you young, and as Lucy reached 100 in dog years, I needed to go back.

In the early evening last night, I let her outside to go to the bathroom. I saw a stick off to the side of the yard and thought "let's recapture youth for a moment" and I attempted to get her to play fetch. I held the stick above my head which always made her bark and beg for the stick. Nothing. I threw the stick. She just looked at me. I came back inside and cried.

She slept nearly nonstop the last few months. All day, all night. And she had mostly lost her hearing, so we would have to clap our hands if we wanted to wake her up to let her outside. It's just so hard to see your dog like that. 2012? If we leave a door open even a tiny crack she's pushing it open and will be five blocks away in two minutes. 2024? I'd let her outside and leave the patio door open even though we don't have a fence because she just wasn't going to wander more than 20 yards from the house.

When I let her back in after the failed fetch attempt, I was at my lowest point. I tried watching some golf, I did the dishes - basically tried anything to keep my mind off of it. But I couldn't.

So I went back to the song. Pulled up the video on YouTube and cranked my laptop speakers as high as they could go. Sat here in this very chair and dabbed the tears from my eyes. I just didn't want today's appointment at the vet to arrive.

And guess who came out of her room? I don't know if the music was too loud (could she hear it?) or if it's just that thing where dogs can sense your emotions, but she came out of her room, walked right up to me, and put her chin on my knee. Years and years of that dog putting her chin on my knee – 80% of the articles I've ever written had her curled up at my feet – and here she was one last time. I ugly cried.

I've always told you that I was born with too many emotions. That I'm not built to be a sports fan. When you're a feeler (and I mean a feeler feeler), the world can be a rough place.

But the flip side of that? Feeling the full depth of moments of beauty like this. Lucy's chin on my knee, her signal for me to "draw the line" (I use my fingers to run a line from the top of her nose up between her eyes), and in the background, these lyrics in the song linked above:

'Cause finding Wonderland is going home again
To feel the love another gives and giving back and then
If you should lose your way reach out for someones hand
And you'll be finding Wonderland

Thanks for that moment, Lucy. I'm gonna miss you, girl. Quitting my job in early 2020 meant that we got to spend all day every day together for the last 4.5 years. After I get back from Nebraska, I'm not really gonna know what to do when I sit down at my desk on Monday and you're not there.

But I also know it was time. I feel like you told me that last night. Which is why I bought you that McDonald's breakfast this morning. After years of looking at my food and hoping I'd drop some, I figured I'd give you the full experience. Those hash browns are so good, right?

I know I'm supposed to think of rainbow bridges at this moment, but I prefer Wonderland. I prefer to think of you in Alice's fantasy land, chasing the Cheshire Cat. If I stay there, I can always remind myself that...

Ordinary magic happens every single day
Wonderland is never far away