When I wrote about Silla going blind two years ago, I ended the post by saying my job was fairly simple: keep her happy and comfortable for as long as I had her with me. I still believe that; I’m just no longer sure that sentence is as simple as I once thought it was.

Silla hasn’t been doing well lately, and now I have to seriously consider her quality of life.

I love this mutt with a heart-shaped nose. I raised her up from a puppy, watched her run and grow. Yet, to my eyes, she’s still just a bitty baby, even now, even blind and shaky. Of course, I want her to stay alive. That makes it difficult to tell where wanting what’s best for her ends and wanting what I can bear for myself begins.

I don’t want her to suffer. I also don’t want her to die. Those sound like two versions of the same thing until suddenly they aren’t. Part of what makes this so difficult for someone like me is that I don’t believe in an afterlife. I wish I did sometimes, especially right now. That belief, or lack thereof, is why I don’t trust myself to see this clearly.

If I genuinely believed Silla would die and then continue somewhere else, restored and happy and able to see again, this would be so much easier. I could tell myself I was sending her somewhere better. I could even imagine her waiting for me. Death would still hurt, obviously, but it wouldn’t feel quite so final.

But I can’t make myself believe something because believing it would make me feel better. I’ve never been able to do that, not even about the little things.

From everything I understand about consciousness, when the brain stops, that’s it. Silla won’t experience being dead because there won’t be A Silla there to experience it. I understand the logic of that; it just doesn’t make ceasing to exist feel like a neutral alternative to being alive.

Silla exists now. There’s a particular little consciousness inside her experiencing some version of the world. She can still hear me. She smells a helluva lot of things. (She uses that nozzle of hers like a weapon.) She can feel my hand on her head. So, clearly, there are still experiences available to her simply because she is here.

Death ends all of that. So I keep arriving at the thought that even a diminished life has to be better than no life at all… Then I immediately run into the other side of it. If this really is the only life Silla gets, then her quality of life matters enormously too. Somehow, the same belief keeps arguing both sides.

Life is precious because there’s nothing after it, so preserve it. Life is precious because there’s nothing after it, so don’t turn it into suffering just because you’re afraid of its ending. Suuuper helpful, right?

For a while, my solution was mostly not to have a solution.

I waited; I watched; I worried. I needed more information, but I also wanted an answer obvious enough that I couldn’t choose wrong. If I let her go, I could wonder whether I did it too soon. If I keep trying, I could wonder whether I waited too long because I couldn’t bear to lose her. There’s no way to live both versions.

I wanted circumstances to make the choice for me. I’m realizing that waiting for the choice to disappear is still choosing. And I recognize that sorta waiting. After Dad died, one of the things I struggled with was a phone call I thought about making and didn’t. There were real reasons why I didn’t call him, but once he was dead, my brain became very interested in everything I theoretically could’ve done differently beforehand.

Silla isn’t Dad, and this isn’t the same situation. (I wonder how long I’ll be doing that, connecting everything I do back to him?) I don’t want to turn her into a stand-in for some unresolved lesson about him, but the feeling is familiar: wanting circumstances to make an unbearable decision on my behalf, so maybe I won’t later accuse myself of choosing wrong.

I know enough about myself now to know that avoiding a decision doesn’t necessarily protect me from that feeling anyway. Maybe that’s partly why I can’t sort my motivations into the categories I want. Am I keeping her here because I think being alive is valuable, or because I’m terrified of losing her? Which thoughts are loving? Which are selfish?

We took Silla to the vet on Saturday.

I’d been waiting for that appointment because I needed more information, but I think some part of me was still hoping the info would make the choice for me. I wanted to walk in confused and walk out certain; that isn’t what happened. (Naturally.)

Silla has several things working against her now, some chronic and some new, but the vet also found things we can still treat. She was alert and responsive. She wasn’t showing signs of pain during the exam. The infections and irritation that have been making her miserable may improve with a longer course of treatment, and we have a plan to see whether they do.

So I made a decision (for once in my life). For now, I’m choosing more time with her. I’m going to keep trying, paying attention to the same question that scared me enough to start thinking about all of this in the first place. What is life actually like for her? There’s a difference between that and simply refusing to let her go, although I’m still trying to understand it myself.

In two weeks, we go back. If she isn’t improving, the quality-of-life conversation is still there waiting. Oddly, that makes the decision both easier and harder. Easier because I no longer feel like I have to answer the entire question of Silla’s life and death today. Harder because I know this isn’t truly an escape from the ultimate choice I will have to make one day soon.

I chose to give us more time because, with what I know right now, there are still things we can try that might make her life feel better to her. That doesn’t mean I suddenly decided all my earlier fears were irrational. It doesn’t mean her quality of life stopped mattering, or that being alive is automatically better under every possible circumstance. And it most certainly doesn’t mean I cracked the philosophical problem of death during a vet appointment.

I still don’t know exactly where that line is. What changed is that I had to stop waiting for perfect certainty before making any choice at all.

One of those medications carries a risk because of the masses she already has. I agreed to it anyway because the immediate goal is her quality of life. That decision surprised me a little once I thought about it. I’ve spent days tying myself into philosophical knots over whether preserving her life should take precedence over everything else, then found myself making a much smaller, more concrete choice in the exam room. I’d rather risk some unknowable future harm if it means making her present more comfortable.

Maybe that’s all I can actually decide. Not whether existence is always better than nonexistence, not exactly when a life becomes too diminished to continue, certainly not whether Future Me will agree with Present Me, just what seems kindest with the information I have today.

I think I’d been waiting for certainty because I believed certainty would protect me from regret. Instead, I got enough information to make a choice and no guarantee that I’ll never question it later. Apparently, those are different things.

Well, today, I think trying is still kind.

Two years ago, “for as long as I have her” felt like the easiest part of the promise. Now I understand why it wasn’t.

inspo: wanting immunity from regret // realizing wanting Silla here and caring about her quality of life are not mutually exclusive motives // thinking about being a conscious creature, even an imperfectly comfortable one, which seems inherently preferable to ceasing to be a conscious creature at all, right? // how the annihilation of a being I love still feels like an enormous loss of something objectively valuable: her // trying to sort every thought into either loving or selfish, as though there has to be one pure motivation buried underneath everything else // thinking about the nature of grief, which seems perfectly capable of prosecuting action and inaction // realizing that not making a choice can feel safer because it postpones having to become the person who chose // wanting reality to make the decision so completely that I can’t later accuse myself of making the wrong one // realizing “keep trying” is not the same thing as “keep her alive at any cost” // choosing her present comfort even when one treatment carries some unknowable future risk // finally making a choice without getting immunity from regret, mostly

Kinsey Keys

aspiring memoirist rummaging through my noggin, stubbornly clutching the past to my chest like it’s a newborn babe starved for mother's milk.

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