In my pocket I have access to all the world’s knowledge:
calculators, AI, essays, videos to solve any equation.
Still, when the vet says 50% chance of permanent paralysis
and, though the literature is sparse, a high probability of
Myelomalacia—fatal, painful—I am as the hiker who
has fallen, leg broken, heat stinging his skin like a swarm
of wasps, his GPS showing the path to safety but not
how he is to survive the journey. And here in this
sterile, fluorescent room, staring at MRI after MRI of
herniated discs and spinal edema, I am doing my own
agonizing algebra, weighing the variables of love, of loss,
of cost, of survivability, of time. What we don’t learn in
school is why math and poetry matter, why, after
I understand what there is to understand, I choose to
hold this whimpering dog as the Propofol flows
and he slumps in my arms, snoring a deep sleep from
which he won’t awake. Or why, flipping through dog-
eared textbooks, nowhere do I learn that I did the right
thing or wrong thing, only that at the end of the paved road
is a wilderness where life is its most tender and complete.

RIP Justice, Wednesday, August 14, 2024