Ollie spent the last few months of his life absorbing the sun from his “throne” – an elevated bed with a plump pillow just outside the sliding doors between our home and the pool. He fought every attempt I made to keep him clean, rolling in the grass after each bath, and soon a small swarm of flies treated his bed like a little airport, landing and taking off all day. The tumor in his hip had grown so large that walking was a struggle, so most days he lay still, one paw draped over his face, or flat on his back with his legs straight up in the air.

At night, he’d come inside for a treat, and I’d do whatever I could to get him to eat. He’d given up on kibble and was surviving on a cat-food diet. He had slimmed back down to the weight he’d been when I first met him, his spine visible beneath his skin. The dark brown spots along his body had faded, and the hair that grew back after chemo had turned an elegant white, draining all the color from his face. He would stumble through the dog door, make his slow, habitual circles around the bed, before plopping down and curling into a ball fit for a dog half his size. When he slept, he did so quietly, a soft grunt escaping every so often, the way he always had.

I didn’t sleep much the night before we had to let him go. He hadn’t been eating much for weeks. But on his last day, he had ice cream and all the treats his stomach could handle. It was a beautiful day. The sun shone on Ollie in his bed the entire morning. That afternoon, we took him on a walk, and for the first time in his life, he was the leader. He pulled to the right, sniffed, then laid down. It was a slow walk. He needed the rest. We stopped again and again – for him to sniff and lay down, sniff and lay down, sniff and lay down.

The dog I knew was so different from the dog others had described to me – the wild one who once jumped clean over a picnic table to steal a burrito straight out of someone’s hand, swallowing it whole before escaping the scene. But I knew that dog too. I once watched him eat an entire bag of potatoes – bag included. I came home more than once to a house that looked like it had been burglarized: garbage torn apart, dishes broken, a closet pulled inside out, half-eaten books and shredded guest linens scattered across the floor. More than once, I lost my temper, cursing the beast after he caught another rabbit in the backyard and I had to dispose of it.

“You just had to get two dogs,” I would say to Amy.

The truth is, Ollie was flawed. That was what endeared him to me. I’ve never been good at getting close to people, and despite my allergies, Ollie insisted himself into my life. Let’s be honest – he had personal space issues. He didn’t understand the concept. When I worked out, he lay on my yoga mat. When I sat on the couch, he wanted nothing more than to be on my lap. His big, dumb head nudged my hand while I painted the house. In the pool, he ran endless laps trying to catch us.

The dog I knew wasn’t wild. He wasn’t trying to destroy things or steal food – well, not only that. He just wanted to be near. To be part of things. The problem with dogs is that you can’t talk to them – they listen, but they don’t always understand. Ollie was a bright part of every day anyway. He was on my cuff when I got married. He was beside me as we explored Phoenix after moving south from Minnesota. He was my best good friend in a city where I didn’t know anyone. And the fact that all he wanted was to cuddle worked for me, because sometimes you just need someone to be there.

That I could look into his brown eyes as he looked up at me in his last moments – his head in my hand while I scratched behind his ear for the final time. He was calm. Curious. Holding my eyes the way he always did, as if an answer might be coming. I had done everything I could for him. The only thing left was the one thing I couldn’t explain.

How can something I no longer have feel like something I’m still carrying?

The indent in his bed, where he spent the last months of his life, remains. A quiet, gutting memorial. He wanted life. He wanted to be part of things. He wanted to be with us. I wanted him to stay. To be.

Life does not pause for wanting. It moves forward without ceremony. Days stack on top of each other. The sun still finds that spot by the sliding door, even when no one is there to feel it. I still catch myself looking for him anyway, expecting his shape to be there, as if love alone might have been enough to hold him in place.

Today, I am grateful Amy got two dogs. I’m learning to carry the space where one of them used to be.