I took a bite from my Dove dark chocolate and marveled at the words printed in its shiny wrapper.

“After every storm there’s a rainbow, no matter how long it takes to show up.” – Grace V., Ohio.

I’m excited to see that rainbow, I thought, carefully pressing out the wrinkled silver square on the corner of my yoga mat.

This will be a good reminder, I thought.

I wasn’t even going to stay. I had come to the studio to teach barre and usually stay for my friend’s yoga class after, but this week I really needed to get home.

But there was a tug.

“The theme is transitions,” the yoga instructor, who had become a major bright spot in my weeks, told me, “Just something to consider.”

Transitions. I was starting one of the biggest transitions of my life. Staying might be good.

I palmed a handful of tissues and scooted my mat to the corner of the room. One thing was sure: there’d be tears. There had been all day. It wouldn’t magically stall out just because my body moved through a few flows. If anything, it may release even more emotion, require even more tissues.

This wasn’t a typical Thursday night. An unusual, upsetting event the evening prior had me in a brand new, difficult frame of mind.

My trusty companion, Hines, and I were out exploring trails of Crow Hassan Park in Rogers, Minnesota. It was like hundreds of other hikes we had taken until silence fell. When I turned to call him, he was unexpectedly close to me, but visibly struggling with his back legs. He was embarrassed and trying to push through. When I swooped down to encourage him to stop, he collapsed. He was 11 and getting noticeably slower the past two weeks, but collapsing on a trail was not anything I anticipated that day.

We had been for walks and hikes consistently since I adopted him more than 10 years prior. Since then, we did most things together. I took him most places dogs were allowed, and many spots they weren’t. We learned to kayak and paddleboard together, explored every nearby park, as well as many parks that weren’t nearby. Almost exactly a year prior, I had taken him to see the Rockies, which he, too, loved.

We were kindred spirits. A dynamic duo. Attached at the hip. Best friends. A match made in heaven.

So when Hines collapsed out of the blue 20 minutes from home and .4 miles into a hike, I was stunned and unsure of how to troubleshoot. To the best of my recollection, he passed out for several moments, perhaps closer to a minute, while I tried to stay calm and come to terms with the fact that I was losing my best friend at that very moment. It was an absolute out-of-body experience. A calm panic washed over me and before I knew it, he picked his head up and looked at me with an expression that indicated he was both startled and disoriented. He eventually got up, walked a few feet, laid back down and started panting.

I gave him water and simultaneously called the vet for advice, planting a seed. My arrival – if I could even get there – would coincide tightly with their closing time. I phoned a friend to help us off the trail, as I knew I couldn’t physically get my 100-pound boy out on my own. Together, my friend and I got him to a veterinary clinic as they closed. Still, the team met us in a parking lot with a stretcher, offering a level of generosity I’d never be able to repay. I can’t recall ever feeling so desperate for help.

Details are fuzzy. I remember needles, an IV, blood draws, a blood pressure cuff, a bright white room, a pillar of a friend and a very lethargic Hines. I recall the comfort one vet tech gave Hines, when I struggled to even look at him, and the conversations I attempted as I pretended to be okay.

After multiple tests and an ultrasound, the vet hadn’t found anything too far out of the norm. She explained they’d do a chest scan – the final test before we’d determine a plan forward.

They wheeled Hines in and out of a dark room in the corner. A few minutes passed before I heard the vet say my name in a tone I’ll never forget.

I looked up and saw her standing in the entry of the dark room. “Will you come here for a minute?”

Everything about the situation told me the news wouldn’t be good. Maintaining the fake assurance to hold myself together, I rose from my seat and approached the dark room. She turned sideways to reveal the x-ray they had just taken.

She looked at me looking at the black and white scan.

The moment reminded me of how I felt looking at the trigonometry board in high school. I stared blankly at the lit-up image and remember thinking “what’s up?” while trying to make sense of what I was seeing. I didn’t see any cracks, no dark spots… what was I looking at even?

“Laura…” she started in.

Again. That tone. Something bad was coming but I wouldn’t believe it.

She started pointing at bright spots on the film.

“These spots are tumors.” She paused, and took her hand away from the image, turning toward me. “He has hundreds of tumors in his lungs.”

Hundreds.

Hundreds of tumors.

Registering this as though it was a solvable issue, I nodded slowly. My eyes didn’t leave the x-ray, but my vision blurred. I closed my eyes and opened them again. Still blurry.  

I anticipated the plan. Some answers. The fix-all. Ideally in the form of a long-lasting, positive and sure solution.

Instead, she continued to explain they weren’t sure where the original tumor was, but it had metastasized. As for the reason his legs went out and he collapsed on the trail: he wasn’t oxygenating well. She looked at me. My slow nod kept its rhythm.

I needed a rewind button. If I had just skipped the trail that day, we wouldn’t be here right now.

Her news was getting a little harder to believe, and she must have seen I was still awaiting the grand plan.

“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do,” she concluded. “If you want, you could take him home for the night.”

Take him home for the night. If I wanted.

I needed far more than the night. I wasn’t ready and therefore, this could not be the end.

For the night could not be my only option. I was hearing her words, but the news was inconceivable, unimaginable, impossible. We weren’t just here for Hines. We were here because of me. Frankly, I was certain I could not continue without him. I had spent a lot of time dreading the day he might not be around and had concluded there was no way I would survive the loss of my pal, my bestie, my No. 1 sidekick.

I recall learning about the five stages of coping in junior high heath class. I distinctly remember registering how dumb I thought it was that ‘denial’ was the first step toward acceptance. What kind of avoidant, immature person would be so ignorant to have to work through such an obvious step of the process?

Me.

People like me. I was absolutely in a state of shock and denial and simply could not accept that my boy would soon just… what… not be there?

She began offering some solutions that sounded hopeful. Steroids and Chinese medicine were the route forward and I was 100% on board for anything that could better this situation and prolong Hines’ life. My boy was 11, but he had a lot of life to live. We had a lot of life to live.

I inquired about how would be best to get him around, as he was wheeled into the clinic on a stretcher after being pulled out of the gravel trails in a wagon, thanks almost entirely to my friend’s strength. I had bought that wagon just a few months prior to cart photography equipment in and out of gigs. I was giddy about how much easier it made my job the first time I used it. Never did I imagine its next use would be an emergency scenario carting Hines out of a park reserve. Now the future looked like it may become its main purpose. How else would I navigate helping my 100-pound dog around by myself?

“My hope is he’ll walk out of here today,” she said.

This news was completely unexpected and the best I had gotten since the team agreed to stay after hours to care for Hines. I looked out of the dark room and into the fluorescent-lit sea of white, and saw he was perking up. I knew he hated that stretcher but showed no signs of distaste until then. He had finally started to glance around nervously, looking for an opportunity to escape the situation. 

That’s my boy, I thought. He’s back. He’s fine. He’s going to be fine. He’ll be good. Everything is good.

If I said it enough, if I really believed it, it would be true.

The crew finished administering the IV, gave him a steroid injection, and we finally lowered him to the shiny tile floor, where he proceeded to pull like hell for the door.

Yep. That’s Hines. He’s fine. He’ll be fine. It’s fine.

I was feeling a little disoriented myself, but with a bag full of medications and information in hand, I inadequately thanked the crew and turned toward the door, hoping I wouldn’t see them again until the next happy-go-lucky wellness exam for Hines in a few months, where we’d reminisce about the “remember when’s” of that one super-odd, out-of-the-blue September day.

Hines proceeded to jump into the back of my car, eager to get home. Unfortunately, I was too caught up in calling my sister to share our news to notice whether Hines was enjoying the ride – a memory I’ll always wish I had.

My friend helped me get Hines situated at home, which wasn’t tough. Hines laid down on his bed and didn’t move the rest of the night. My friend and I visited for a while; a distraction I took for granted until he went home for the night. At that point I sat with Hines and the flood started. I made a few phone calls and by the end of the night, my head had pressurized, and my face ached.

So this is the mental space I was in when I rolled out my yoga mat that Thursday, the night after Hines’ collapse. I felt guilty for leaving him alone at home for a few hours, but I tried to find peace in knowing he could use a break from my crying, sniffling and fixated gazing.

The class began, and the “transitions” theme was on point, movements guided by words that seemingly directly reflected what I was going through.

“The two most important transitions we will make are the one into our life and the one out.”

…

“Life is challenging and unique, it holds no promises or guarantees, nor does it move how we demand it should.”

…

“How you say goodbye, end a pose, leave a job, finish a class, or end a relationship carries energy into the next. Each thought, each breath, each action leads to another. The trick is to know and appreciate when something has finished, and transition with grace.”

…

“If we cling to what has been, even when we know it is over, we leave no room for the new.”

…

I was dumbfounded. Tears streamed down my cheeks. Room for the new… what could that even look like? I loved the old so much I hadn’t given a single thought to the new. I spent the next several days reflecting on that class, on transitions. It was late September, and the leaves were turning, serving as a constant reminder.

Fall is here.

Colors are changing.

Leaves are falling.

Trees are letting go.

I may need to, as well.

Shootin’ the Wit is a sporadic blog about everyday life that should never, ever be taken too seriously.

This is post 1 in a 3-part series. Click here to read post #2 of the series.