Tag: Zach

Broken

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

You and she both cancer-ridden;
But you had to go first.
I have no words to express
What you must have gone through,
You just looked at me with glassy eyes
Caused by hanging onto life.

I lifted you for every walk
And you told me,
When you were done.
I listened.

I’m sorry, I lost my temper…
My love was frayed and my heart broken…
And I tried my best to love you better…
But breaking human hearts
Have – limitations.

I let you go, my first-born son.
I didn’t know I still had it in me.
I don’t know what will happen
As your sister continues to bleed.

But I will stand by her
As I did by you –
Even though our bodies don’t.
Even though my heart has
broken,
It is yours.

Loving Them All the Way

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Tonight, I gave Xena a bath.

I cleaned away the remnants of blood from last week — not because they bothered her anymore, but because I wanted her to feel fresh, clean, held. I dried her gently, blow-dried her fur, and then sat with her the way I do every night, performing what has now become ritual.

Cleaning her mast cell tumours.

Bandaging the ones that still bleed.

Cleaning her anus and the lipoma around it.

Cleaning the mast cell near her eye.

Only while writing this did I remember that I forgot to apply the Fur Fresh ointment around her eye. The cone is on, though. I’m sitting right here. She’s safe. Sometimes caregiving is like this — you do ninety-nine things right and then your heart races over the one you missed.

Beyond the physical work lies the real weight.

The daily fear of losing her.

The anxiety of that dreaded call — again.

The kind of love that doesn’t sit quietly but presses against your chest until breathing feels incomplete.

Xena has been my heart and soul since she stepped into my life in 2014, after Zoe passed in 2013. And now Zach is gone too. Losing him shattered something in me that I’m still gathering up, piece by piece. Taking care of two dogs with terminal illnesses has taken a toll — on my back, my knees, my head, my heart.

Sometimes, in the middle of work, I just start crying.

I look at Xena and think of Zach.

A song plays, and I’m undone.

I am hurting. I am exhausted. I am terrified of the inevitability I don’t want to name. And still, every day, I choose to show up and make her comfortable — because this is what love demands when it is no longer convenient or pretty.

I don’t expect help from friends. I’ve made my peace with that. But my family and my partners have risen in ways that matter. My sister has been a pillar. Her husband, who was close to Zach, sees now — truly sees — the toll this has taken on me. Anand is grieving too, even if his grief speaks a different language than mine.

And me? I am so tired.

So anxious.

So stretched thin that sometimes I can’t take a full breath.

I want to write this because I want the world to understand something simple and brutal: loving an animal doesn’t mean loving them only when they are young, beautiful, playful, and easy. Loving an animal means going all the way. It means staying when they are old, sick, inconvenient, and breaking your heart.

This is the first time I’ve had two senior dogs at the same time. I’ve always had one elder and one younger — balance, continuity, hope. But losing Zach and knowing Xena may follow within months has cracked something open in me.

Six months apart.

Two souls.

One heart learning, again, what it means to love without conditions.

This is not a story about strength.

This is a story about staying.

Zach

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I placed salt in the south-east corners of the house.

On the window sills.

Outside the main door.

I circled it around the bodies of those I love — seven times each — some asleep, some awake. Ancient gestures, borrowed hope. The small human instinct to bargain with forces we do not understand when life begins to slip through our fingers.

But love does not always win by force.

My baby boy continued to deteriorate. The mannitol that was meant to help only added new indignities — pressure on his bladder, blood where there should have been none. Blood in his urine. Blood in his stools. The body, brave for so long, began to quietly surrender.

The doctor told me it was time.

You can prepare for that sentence all you want. You can see it coming days, weeks, even months in advance. But when it finally arrives, it still lands like a blow to the chest. It is always difficult to hear. Always harder to witness — the slow, visible unravelling of someone you love.

I have stood at this threshold many times now. One would think death would feel familiar, even friendly. But death never comes alone. He brings grief with him — vast, consuming — and the promised relief feels like something that belongs to a future too far away to touch.

Before the end, I took Zach to Old Raj Mahal Lane — the place where he was happiest. He walked off the leash, free, unburdened, until his legs could no longer carry him. We went home after that. I fed him pizza, his favourite tuna slices from Joey’s. He ate every morsel with quiet devotion, as if marking the moment, as if saying thank you.

Now I wait.

I wait for the doctor to come home, carrying the injection of relief. Relief for him — and perhaps, someday, for me too. When my own body can no longer go on. When I am tired beyond repair. When I am surrounded by those who love me enough to let me rest.

That is what my baby boy is being given today.

And I wish — with every fibre of my being — that it did not have to be my decision. But love, when it is real, does not cling. It listens. It watches suffering honestly. And if ending pain is the last act of care left to us, then we take that burden onto ourselves so they don’t have to carry it any longer.

This is not cruelty.

This is mercy.

This is love that chooses to hurt so another does not have to.