Grieving Andrea with the One Who Loved Them Longest

The other girl in Andrea’s bed

I share a bed with the other great big love of Andrea’s life. She’s a petite and feisty blonde. A terrier mix named Squash. Ten pounds of scruff; a little deaf, a little blind. She’s the only girl who slept beside Andrea longer than I did.

Andrea’s love for dogs was boundless. Once, they turned down a significant-sized paycheck to write a dog food commercial because by Andrea’s standards, the ingredients weren’t healthy enough for puppies.

But their bond with Squash was singular. For her, they wrote epic love poems with lines like: “If I could, I would put your beating heart in my mouth and suck on it like a piece of candy so I could finally understand how you got so sweet.” On tour, they invited Squash on stage and let her steal the show. And when Andrea became sick, Squash was the first to know.

For years, Andrea believed that there was no way they could ever handle Squash dying. That it would be an unbearable loss. But throughout Andrea’s cancer diagnosis, they wished instead to outlive her, to carry her through her last moments. To walk her toward that rainbow bridge. For Squash to die in the safest place she ever knew: Andrea’s tattooed arms.

Squash is almost fourteen now—Andrea chose to share their birthday with her. A few months back, she started showing signs of dementia. Her decline appeared mostly at night. Out of nowhere, she’d leap from the bed and pace. We’d wake to the sound of her toenails frantic on the hardwood. After we picked her up, kissed her peanut-butter beard, and reminded her of who she was (the best little girl in the whole world), she’d fall back asleep between us.

We didn’t worry too much. She’d still maim our fingers for a French fry. She’d still howl as I approached the reservoir where we took our walks, demanding I pull over like a tiny tyrant. She’d still roll her freshly bathed body in the rankest thing she could find. Still snuggled like a world-class champion of cuteness. Her episodes seemed harmless. Blips in an otherwise paradisical canine life.

When Andrea began to die, I pulled the dogs into bed with us. This was our family. We had never done anything without them—why would we start now? This is the last time we will all share a bed, I thought. The last time the pack will be whole.

After Andrea’s last breath, I kissed their cheek, which cooled faster than I imagined. I wrapped their quieted arms around me so I could feel held by them one more time. Register this, I told myself. Memorize the exact weight of this goodbye.

Then I let the dogs press their noses to Andrea’s skin and feel the difference: the stillness, the body no longer lit by that incredible spirit. I wanted them to understand what I still cannot.

I didn’t want any of us haunting doorways, noses pressed to glass, waiting for footsteps that would never come.

It surprised me how well Squash seemed to handle our loss. The following day, she didn’t fog the sliding glass door with her anxious breath as she normally would when Andrea went out for a drive or a coffee. She didn’t scour the rooms for them like she used to, nosing her way into the bathroom so she could stand guard over their clothes while they showered. She curled herself against me instead. She knew. I was the inheritor of Andrea’s other great, everlasting love.

Leave it to the animals, I thought, to be so much more at peace and in tune with the most natural thing on earth. Teach me, I begged.

A week after Andrea died, Squash had another dementia episode. At 1 a.m., I heard her usual jump. But this time it was different. Yes, the click-click-click of her teeny toenails seemed louder in the silence Andrea left behind—but it was more than that. She hid beneath the bed. She wouldn’t come when called. I laid myself down on the hardwood, cooing to her. She blinked back. Blank. I scurried downstairs for treats, which coaxed her out for a moment, but when I reached for her, she darted back under. As if I were a stranger.

My heart felt crushed—total, absolute, as if placed beneath a hydraulic press. I had lost so much. Was I losing Squash, too? With my cheek against the floorboards, I panicked: What does she need to feel safe? What does she need to remember she is home?

The answer came fast: She needs Andrea.
“I get it, Squash,” I whispered. “I really, really do.”

So I ransacked the room for something—anything—that still smelled like them. A t-shirt, a bandana, a pillowcase. But our friends, in their love, had washed everything. It was a kindness so thorough it felt like a crime scene. Every trace of Andrea scrubbed clean. I wanted to scream. How many times in a week could you lose the same person? How many false bottoms are there in this endless pit of grief?

But I had one thing left, didn’t I?

I had Andrea’s voice.

All of Andrea’s albums are online. Decades of poetry. I queued up a playlist on my phone. The first few musical notes of “Angel of the Get Through” played, and then Andrea was coming through the speakers, saying “This year has been the hardest year of your whole life…”

Within seconds, Squash emerged. She climbed her little stairs and curled between her siblings Winnie and Idgie like nothing had been wrong. I left the phone by her head, Andrea’s voice filling the dark. She didn’t get up again. She didn’t stir.

Listen, I fall asleep to Andrea’s voice too. “Love Letter from the After Life” is the last thing I play every night. The lullaby that was Andrea’s breathing is gone; now I drift off to the sound of their poems. The thing about grief is you keep finding new ways to tuck yourself in.

I wonder how many people are doing the same right now. How many of us are letting Andrea read us a bedtime story. What is Squash but a small, furry, four-legged mirror of the human experience?

I keep thinking about how, when someone dies, they fade in increments. Somewhere I read that we die twice—once when we take our last breath, and again when the last person who remembers us dies.

But Andrea is different, aren’t they? Their name is being said more, not less. Their books are blooming in new hands, their words sparking wildfires in new hearts. God it’s so beautiful. God it’s strange.

In some ways I am comforted in how gone they do not feel. In some ways I am bracing for the seismic shock when the chatter stops. (Please, don’t let the chatter stop.)

Still—how lucky we are to live in this moment. To have Andrea’s voice seemingly everywhere. An infinite radio of wisdom. And how fortunate we who knew Andrea personally are to watch people online refer to them the Rumi of our time. To imagine they’ll be remembered a thousand years from now and that not feel like a stretch.

When Andrea’s voice sings through the speaker, both Squash and I turn toward it, both fooled for one perfect and impossible second into thinking they’re home. And even if what follows wrecks me, I love that suspended moment—my heart still waiting by the door.

Love,
Meg + Squash [+ Andrea, forever.] 🖤