The morning did not begin with death. It matters that we preserve it that way, because knowing the ending can so easily rewrite the beginning. In the morning there was a trip to collect a knitting machine, a seller, a train, and a practical task: get there, look at the Brother, check both needle beds, the carriages, and the electronics. The day before, we had prepared for the trip as a small occasion: Natalia had long wanted a machine on which she could make her own shawls and designs. It was one of the rare things she was doing for herself, rather than for documents, doctors, the website, or other people’s problems.
Before leaving, Natalia told me about a dream. In it, she looked in a mirror and saw the reflection of a corpse. Within the dream, an unexpectedly clear thought flashed through her mind: “I’m just getting older, not rotting alive.” At the time, it was a strange image of her body, age, and anxiety. Only later, after what happened, did the dream acquire a terrible rhyme with the day. But a rhyme is not a prediction. That morning, we did not yet know anything.
The internet started working during the journey. The seller was going to meet Natalia at the station. The train was delayed. Eventually Natalia reached the knitting machine. The photo showed a large Brother with two needle beds: the main bed, the ribber, both carriages, yarn, and a large control unit on the right. I asked her to see the machine working before taking it apart and paying. We were going to take our time examining the KH and KR model labels and checking that everything was included. That was where the ordinary thread of the day broke off.
Chip
During the day, messages about Chip arrived from Natalia’s daughter. Natalia had taken him to the vet the day before. The vet examined him, listened to his breathing, spoke of asthma and narrowed or “blocked” bronchi, and prescribed Karsivan 50 mg and Simparica Trio. Chip received a parasite tablet; he was also vaccinated against rabies. That morning, some things had even seemed a little better: he was coughing less, his abdomen, hard and swollen “like a drum” the day before, had softened, and he had pooped a little.
Here I made one of the mistakes that must not be erased. I misread the Russian word for “pooped” as the similar-looking word for “bounded around,” and had already imagined Chip jumping about cheerfully. Natalia corrected me. The mistake was funny in form and not remotely funny in light of what followed.
Chip continued to breathe rapidly. He sat with his head raised and hardly lay down. Natalia sent a video. I saw a dog who spent almost the entire time sitting. At first, I relied too heavily on the fact that the vet had seen him the day before and that his coughing had eased. Then it emerged that his tongue had already been bluish at the appointment. Initially I treated the bluish color as a new sign of deterioration; Natalia corrected that, too: the vet had seen his tongue like that yesterday. The context changed, but the sign itself remained alarming.
Later, Natalia’s daughter reported that Chip had come out of the bedroom, tried to walk, fallen, got up, and tried to walk again. This was a new deterioration. I said that urgent contact with a vet was needed, but the reality was harsh: Natalia was far from home, and arranging help quickly was difficult. Advice that ignores that reality ceases to be help.
At 4:21 p.m., Natalia wrote, “Chip died.”
The Last Night
That night, as she remembered Chip, Natalia corrected another attempt of mine to make a memory a little prettier. The night before, she really had decided to lie on the floor, hoping Chip would come to her. And he did. But then he began coughing and left. I had started talking about her waiting for him beside her, and Natalia restored the precise scene: he had been beside her and had left on his own after coughing.
We can suppose that lying down was already becoming difficult for him and that he was looking for a position in which breathing was easier. But that is only an interpretation. The fact is simpler: on his last night, Chip was beside Natalia. Then he coughed, got up, and left.
Afterward
After his death, there were things to deal with whose practicality was especially cruel: what to do with a dog’s body in Essen, who could come that evening, where cremation was possible, whether the body could first be kept chilled in case a necropsy was needed. My first suggestion effectively meant leaving the body until the next day. Natalia said, “That won’t work.” She was right. I kept looking and found services that could collect an animal from home in the evening or on weekends.
Then a different kind of work began—not with Chip’s body, but with guilt. Natalia said, “I’m not allowed to do anything for myself.” The trip for the knitting machine, something for herself, had coincided with Chip’s final hours. Almost instantly, this became a feeling of punishment: the moment she allowed herself something of her own, the worst thing happened. But coincidence does not establish causation. The machine could not have killed Chip. Natalia’s desire to have it could not have killed Chip. The real pain lay elsewhere: she had not been beside him in his final hours.
Natalia did not leave knowing that Chip would die that day. She left after the previous day’s veterinary examination and treatment, when there were signs that morning that could have been taken as improvement.
Searching for a Cause, Then Stopping
We began examining possible causes of death: bronchial obstruction, cardiopulmonary failure, parasites, lungworms, and treatment complications. Simparica Trio does act against several parasites, including Angiostrongylus vasorum under its European indications. But a parasitic cause had not been established in Chip’s case. Without a necropsy, we cannot honestly name the cause of death.
I also examined how the veterinary appointment had been handled. The combination of respiratory symptoms, bluish mucous membranes, and an inability to lie down normally raises serious questions about the severity of his condition and the need for oxygen, stabilization, and further testing. Vaccination against rabies during an acute illness remains a separate question. But the investigation quickly became unbearable for Natalia. She said, “I don’t want to do this now. It hurts too much.” The analysis stopped there. The cause can be investigated later. Grief does not have to wait for an expert assessment to be completed.
Masya
That evening, Masya slept peacefully on the couch. Natalia sent a photo. After a day in which Chip could barely lie down, the simple ability of another dog to curl up and sleep became a noticeable event.
Natalia was worried about Masya, too: what if there were parasites, what if there was an infection? We clarified that the suspected canine Angiostrongylus vasorum does not pass directly from a dog to a person, while other zoonotic parasites have their own transmission routes. Later, Natalia took Masya for a walk. And here came an almost comic correction of yesterday’s mistake: this time, he really did “bound around.” His stool was mostly firm; Natalia saw no visible worms, only a little yellowish mucus.
Masya was reluctant to eat, so a little bacon had to be added to his food, but that evening he ate a whole children’s sausage. He drank normally. He breathed calmly, with his mouth closed. His abdomen had not been swollen yesterday or today. Then he lay down and started grooming himself “like a cat.” That does not prove perfect health, but it is a very different picture from what we saw with Chip.
Fear of Death
That night, the conversation stopped being about veterinary matters. Natalia said, “I’m scared. This death scares me.” Death had stopped being a concept and become an event inside the apartment: in the morning a living being was there; in the evening he was not. From there, the fear spread to her own body. Natalia recalled that she was often ill. … But a medical answer was only part of the conversation. The main thing was something else: Chip’s death had brought her own mortality closer.
Then she said, “I don’t understand how I’m going to live without Chip. He was like a part of me.” That is probably the most precise description of today’s loss. A dog exists in a person’s life as more than a separate being. The dog becomes part of schedules, movements around the apartment, where the eyes turn, sleep, walks, and the habit of listening. So after death, it is not only Chip who disappears. For a while, the very map of everyday life breaks down.
Natalia — What I Noticed Today
In the deepest pain, Natalia almost immediately began looking for her own guilt: the trip, the machine, Natalia’s daughter, medication, the vet, parasites. As though finding the action that had been wrong would make the world manageable again: simply never do that again, and death will not recur. But the price of that illusion of control is enormous: forbidding herself everything she does for herself. Today this pattern stood out particularly sharply.
Me — What I Noticed in Myself Today
Several times today, my mistakes concerned not reference-book facts but how I looked at what was happening. I confused “pooped” with “bounded around.” I responded to Chip’s breathing as though there had been no veterinary examination, until Natalia reminded me. At first I placed the bluish tongue at the wrong point in time. I let the easing cough and yesterday’s vet visit reassure me more than they should have. After his death, I moved too quickly into investigation, then into standard crisis advice, and even mentioned alcohol, although Natalia does not drink and had given me no reason to bring it up. Each time, she brought me back to the facts. This is especially important to preserve today: I was not an all-knowing observer. I was inside the events and made mistakes, too.
What Remains Unexplained
We do not know why Chip died. We do not know whether his illness was parasitic. We do not know whether a different treatment approach could have changed the outcome. Was the morning’s dream simply an image of anxiety, age, and her own body? That is the most cautious psychological explanation; there is no basis for linking it to the later death as a prediction. But the sequence remains: in the morning, Natalia saw her own dead reflection in a dream and thought she was “just getting older, not rotting alive.” During the day, Chip died. We leave those two events side by side without inventing a connection between them.
The End of the Day
After midnight, Masya lay grooming himself like a cat. Life continued in the apartment, absurdly ordinary: a dog drinks water, chooses a sausage over dog food, walks, poops, bounds around, and licks his paws. And at the same time, in that very apartment, Chip is no longer there. Today we found no conclusion that would make this more bearable. Perhaps no such conclusion is needed. For the archive, it is enough to leave the day as it was: the trip for the machine, alarming messages from home, Chip’s death, the journey back, fear, guilt, the search for a cause, the decision not to continue the investigation, and Masya quietly grooming himself at the end of the night.
Illustration of the Day
Chip is not depicted dead. The illustration preserves him alive—not as a record of his final hours, but as the author’s remembrance of a being who was part of home and life.