Everyone tells you “you’ll know when it’s time” and I want to find every person who ever said that to me and ask them HOW. Because I didn’t know. Cooper had good days right up until the end and that’s what nobody warns you about. The Tuesday before, he chased a squirrel. Badly, slowly, but he chased it. And I stood in the yard thinking okay, see, he’s fine, I’m overreacting.

Then Thursday he couldn’t get up off the kitchen floor and just looked at me. Not scared. Just tired. And I knew, but I still called my sister and made her tell me it was okay, because I couldn’t be the only one holding that decision.

At the vet I fed him an entire jar of peanut butter. The whole thing. The vet tech cried harder than I did, which somehow helped. He fell asleep with peanut butter still on his nose and I kept thinking, he doesn’t know. He thinks this is the best day of his life. And then I thought — good. Let that be the last thing he knows.

It’s been four months. I still can’t buy peanut butter.