The Way We Said Goodbye

So many years later, the old dog still circles, head lowered, crippled by arthritis, nearly blind, incontinent. We repeat the litany, as if we need convincing that the end is right. I'll get her an ice cream cone if you'll drive her to the vet, my wife says. So there we sit on the front steps with our friend, and in the car, as always, when she senses the doctor's office drawing near, she moans and tries to burrow underneath the seats. What remains, the memory of how she taught us all the way we need to learn to live with wasting. There we sit, together, one last time as all that sweetness slowly disappears.