I wanted to share this story because it’s important. And it’s sad, but also beautiful and inspiring. It’s about the loss of our beloved dogs, which is something we all eventually face, but it’s especially relevant because it addresses the choice to honor your friend by putting their care and final days ahead of everything else. No matter who you are, no matter what.
I lost two of my best friends this year, Henry and Nicholas. Lots of things were put on hold, set aside, canceled. The days and nights of bawling and praying and bargaining and pleading “please eat just a little!”. And the precious moments that you can give them that have always been special, but are now even more delicate. It’s something you have to go through for them. And with them. It’s part of the deal, part of the package. And it’s an honor.
Well said, Fiona. Janet is a 14-year-old pit bull rescued by Fiona Apple as a puppy from a dogfighting situation in LA, and she is her best friend. She’s also dying, so Fiona decided to postpone the South American portion of her tour, and wrote the most eloquent letter (she’s Fiona Apple, after all) to explain her decision. It’s a beautiful and honest tribute, and it gives me added strength when I remember the crummy individuals and situations I’ve encountered during those trying but necessary times. So, you go, Fiona.
The transcript:
It’s 6pm on Friday,and I’m writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet.
I am writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later.
Here’s the thing.
I have a dog Janet, and she’s been ill for almost two years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She’s almost 14 years old now. I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then, an adult officially–and she was my child.
She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face. She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders. She’s almost 14 and I’ve never seen her start a fight, or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She’s a pacifist.
We’ve lived in numerous houses, and jumped a few makeshift families, but it’s always really been the two of us.
She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head.
She has Addison’s Disease, which makes it dangerous for her to travel since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and to excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death.
Despite all of this, she’s effortlessly joyful and playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago.
She’s my best friend and my mother and my daughter, my benefactor, and she’s the one who taught me what love is.
When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference.
She doesn’t even want to go for walks anymore.
I know that she’s not sad about aging or dying. Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That’s why they are so much more present than people.
But I know that she is coming close to point where she will stop being a dog, and instead, be part of everything. She’ll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go.
I just can’t leave her now, please understand.
If I go away again, I’m afraid she’ll die and I won’t have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out.
Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes to pick which socks to wear to bed.
But this decision is instant.
These are the choices we make, which define us.
I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship.
I am the woman who stays home and bakes Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend.
And helps her be comfortable, and comforted, and safe, and important.
Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life, that keeps us feeling terrified and alone.
I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time.
I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments.
I need to do my damnedest to be there for that.
Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I’ve ever known.
When she dies.
So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and reveling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel.
Love, Fiona
Dogs Make Everything Better 