Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

“Would you like another few minutes? It’s no problem at all.”

“No, it’s OK.”

“You’ll see me put some pressure on Argus’s vein, so as to be sure the needle enters properly. You can hold him. Within a few seconds, Argus will take a deeper breath, then appear to sleep.”

Jacob was disturbed by the vet’s repeated use of Argus’s name, his seeming unwillingness to refer to Argus as him or he . It felt cruel, the constant reminder of Argus’s specific personhood, or of Jacob’s identity as Argus’s namer.

“Though completely unconscious, Argus might take a few more breaths. I’ve found that, for whatever reason, the older the dog, the longer the unconscious breathing goes on.”

“That’s interesting,” Jacob said, and in an instant, as the g freed itself from the back of his hard palate, his discomfort with the vet’s use of Argus’s name morphed into anger at himself — the anger that was often deeply buried, and often projected, but was always there. That’s interesting . What a stupid thing to say right then. What an unimportant, cheapening, disgusting remark. That’s interesting. All day he’d been experiencing fear, and sadness, and guilt about not being able to give Argus a little longer, and pride at having given him this long, but now, at the arrival of the moment, he was only angry.

“You’re ready to let him go?” the vet asked.

“Sorry. Not yet.”

“Of course.”

“You’re good,” Jacob said, pulling at the excess skin between Argus’s shoulders, just as Argus liked.

Jacob must have given the vet a suggestive look, because he once again asked, “Are you ready?”

“You’re not going to give him some sort of sedative or, I don’t know, painkiller so he doesn’t feel the shot?”

“Some vets do. I don’t. It can just as often make them more anxious.”

“Oh.”

“Some people like to be left alone for a few minutes first.”

Jacob gestured at the vial in the vet’s hand and asked, “Why is that fluid so bright?”

“So it’s never mistaken for something else.”

“That makes sense.”

He needed to let go, of the anger and everything else, but he needed help to do so, but he needed to do it alone.

“Could I stay with the body? Until the cremation?”

“I’m sure we could arrange that.”

Jacob said, “Argus,” naming him for the second time — once in the beginning, once at the end.

Argus’s eyes rose to meet Jacob’s. There was no acceptance to be found in them. No forgiveness. There was no knowledge that all that had happened was all that would happen. As it had to be, and as it should be. Their relationship was defined not by what they could share, but what they couldn’t. Between any two beings there is a unique, uncrossable distance, an unenterable sanctuary. Sometimes it takes the shape of aloneness. Sometimes it takes the shape of love.

“OK,” Jacob said to the vet, still looking into Argus’s eyes.

“Don’t forget how it ends,” the vet said, readying the needle. “Argus dies fulfilled. His master has finally come home.”

“But after so much suffering.”

“He has peace.”

Jacob didn’t tell Argus, “It’s OK.”

He told him: “Look at me.”

He told himself: Life is precious, and I live in the world.

He told the vet: “I’m ready.”

Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of two bestselling, award-winning novels, Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close , and a bestselling work of nonfiction, Eating Animals . He lives in Brooklyn and teaches at New York University. You can sign up for email updates here.