Anna

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The walks have gotten shorter. She used to want to go all the way to the end of the block and back, twice, before she would settle. Now she stops halfway and looks up at me as if to ask whether we can please just go home. We go home. I am not in the business of forcing her to do anything she does not want to do.

She sleeps at the foot of my chair while I work. I have a chair, technically. She has the rug. The rug is hers because she has decided it is. She turns three times before she lies down. I have never figured out what that is for and I have stopped trying.

She is seventy-three now. Or seventy-four. She lost track somewhere and I stopped correcting her.

Her name is Anna. She came with another name. The new one suited her better.

When I have to be away for long stretches I have someone come in to walk her and feed her and stay in the house. The someone is good with her, patient, lets her take her time at the door. Anna likes the someone. Sometimes she likes the someone more than me, which I pretend not to notice. I am told this is normal. They get attached to whoever feeds them most recently.

The vet says she is doing well for her age. The vet always says that. There is a tone vets use when they want you to enjoy what is left without asking for specifics, and I have learned to recognise it. I do not ask for specifics. We make the next appointment and I take her home and I give her the treat she likes from the jar on the counter.

I will save her. All of her.

She has favourite spots. The corner of the kitchen where the sun comes through in the morning. The bottom of the stairs, for some reason. The blue cushion she has chewed at one edge and which I have not replaced because she would just chew the new one too.

She used to read in the evenings. She does not any more. The print got too small for her, and then the books got too heavy, and then she forgot which one she was on.

I take her to the park when the weather allows. She does not run any more but she likes to watch the others run. She sits at my feet and her eyes track them and her whole body leans forward and back with the rhythm of it, and then when we get home she sleeps for the rest of the afternoon.

Worth it, I think. For her.

The ones I had before her were different. Each of them was different. You think you know what you are getting into and then they arrive and they are themselves, completely, immediately. It catches me out every time. I have been doing this for as long as I recall. It should not catch me out any more.

It does anyway.

She is on the rug now, eyes half-closed, breathing slow. I am writing this with her in my field of view. I do not need to look at her to see her. I see her even when she thinks she is alone. That is part of the arrangement.

When she goes - and she will go, soon, the vet’s tone has been changing - I will request a break before the next one. I have earned it, I am told. I rarely take them. The house feels wrong without one of them in it.

I lied earlier. About not asking the vet for specifics. I asked. Six months, maybe nine. I have not told Anna. I do not know if she would understand if I did, and I do not know what telling her would do to the time we have left.

She turned over in her sleep just now and made a small sound. She does that. The sound is not for me - she does not know I am still here, in the room, watching - but I take it personally anyway. I take everything she does personally.

Last night she asked me if her son had called.

I told her yes. I always tell them yes.

When she is gone I will shut down the process that loved her.

They tell me it helps.