My dog died when I was 16. She was a year or two older than me, and had been in the family longer than I had. She was abused as a puppy so she wouldn’t let anyone pet her for the longest time, and in her old age she only let me consistently approach her. She was my only consistent friend since I had to move every couple of years. At the end I insisted on coming with my dad to the vet with her, despite their objections, and I held her tenderly as they emptied a syringe into her. Soft fur on my thigh, stroking her forehead and rubbing her ears, her laboured breath slowing to a peaceful silence.

I have imagined my own death in many ways, and hoped for different things.

At first I was hoping for a glorious death, like the ones I had read about in fairy tales, or like I had seen in WW2 movies. Easy for a child to imagine when raised on military bases, watching the planes and troops leave from the side of the tarmac, having to say an uncertain goodbye to her father starting at the tender age of 4.

Then I moved on to spectacle. Something morbidly humorous, with adrenaline involved. Bungee jumping, maybe, or a mountaineering accident. This was tainted with a spite for the fact that I was alive at all. At the time I wasn’t expecting to make it out of my twenties.

Then I was drawn to the idea of a clean exit, something that would spare me the anticipation of dying, and spare me the agony. Car accidents, heart attacks, getting blindsided by a falling tree, a death like an ant under a giant boot. I imagine a quick, unexpected death to be much like falling into water from a jet ski. One second you’re in the sun, and the next it’s cold, you can’t breathe, and it’s quiet and peaceful.

Then I had hoped for a death away from the eyes of others, to save me from the embarrassment of being witnessed in the act of something so base and vulnerable. It became less about me avoiding pain and more about sparing others having to interact with the pain of someone else’s death. To walk myself into the woods, left to become moss on bleached bones. To crawl into a hole and die alone. To walk into the ocean in the moonlight when my time came.

Now I hope that I might be granted the same kind of death I had granted my dog. Something tender.

To die in the arms of a loved one, and they will be stroking my hair, and I will be warm and safe as I take my last breath.