Where Compassion Starts

We said goodbye to Apollo, our family dog of 17 years this weekend. We adopted him my senior year of high school and I’m grateful that he had a long and generally healthy life. I’m also grateful for his friendship and love, especially for the company he’s given to my father and mother since I moved out of my childhood home.

This passing was different than that of my father, which was sudden and chaotic. Apollo’s passing, rather, is one that I had seen coming for almost two years now. Because of that, I feel like his loss is one that I’ve accepted and grieved already, for the most part - as much as one can anyway.

I don’t mean for this post to be a eulogy, however. But I wanted to open with his passing because I work out my feelings with words and I am sad that he’s no longer with us. More than that, that he’s gone ahead is important context for an unexpected moment of compassion.

The Doctor, and the staff surrounding here, who administered his final medication were obviously compassionate in all the ways I expected. Like in the tenderness of their words and body language, their expression of sorrow, the gentleness in their voices when walking us through the process and paperwork.

Then the Doctor, Dr. Preston, I think her name was - surprised me with an act of quite unexpected compassion.

The final dose of medicine was given through injection. To administer this, Dr. Preston carefully and gently shaved a bit of Apollo’s hair from his hind leg. Makes sense, I thought, much easier to find a blood vessel that way.

But then she sterilized the area with an alcohol solution, not in a robotic, I-do-this-a-dozen-times-a-day sort of way, but in a way that was peaceful and more deliberate. It was if she was acknowledging the gravity of the moment by performing this unnecessary act - Apollo had no medical purpose to avoid infection because he was about to die - and doing it anyway. This gave the whole affair, a welcome sense of respect and dignity.

And then he received the dose. It was done. And about 10 minutes later Apollo had gone ahead.

But then, again, Dr. Preston surprised me.

She informed us that his heart had stopped. She let a moment pass, letting us exhale. And then she covered his poke point with a little bandage and a little turquoise bandage wrap. The same sort of dressing, a healthy dog would’ve received. He was already gone, but she still bandaged his leg. Medically, it was totally unnecessary, but she did it anyway.

It was one of the greatest acts of compassion and respect I have ever seen.

“Thanks for wrapping him up,” I said, sincerely and matter-of-factly, with my upper cheeks quivering.

And then I asked if she needed anything else from me. She gently and politely said no, and then I left.

I have been thinking a lot in the past 24 hours about Dr. Preston’s unexpected act of compassion. It instantly made me feel hopeful, seen, and loved even.

How does someone find the grace to act, and be, like that that? How did Dr. Preston? How can I be that compassionate in my life? What might the world be like if even 1% more people regularly showed compassion like Dr. Preston had so unexpectedly?

Surely part of that is just circumstance, and probably practice. But even given those explanations, the compassion Dr. Preston shared was still remarkable and uncommon. 

And I really don’t have a precise answer on where compassion comes from. But I got a sense of where it might start while reflecting on, of all things, my trip to the grocery store today.

I was weaving through the aisles briskly, picking up supplies as I usually do. A piece of fish at the butcher counter. A bottle of ketchup. A carton of strawberries. The usual. But I also happened to need some water chestnuts, because we’re making a simple stir fry dinner one night this week. Luckily a store associate was stocking the shelves just as I got to the international foods section.

As I was driving home, I was remembering the interactions I had at the store. I had asked the person at the meat counter for about a pound and a half of salmon, but l didn’t even really remember her. The associate near the water chestnuts seemed unusually meek and quiet, that I noticed. But instead of saying good morning I just awkwardly snuck between her supply cart and the shelf to pick up my can of water chestnuts and went on my way. I think was polite to the self-checkout manager, but again, I had more or less forgotten my interaction with her.

During my run to the store, I had done nothing that different than anyone else. I was focused, efficient, and cordial enough to anyone I happened to speak to. But to not even be able to remember anything about those people? That indicated something overly transactional and not fully human.

I had left home, was weaving through the aisles of the grocery store, but had remained fully engaged only inside the world of my own mind, and my checklist. I had let the invisible people around me stay more or less invisible. My choice wasn’t improper, perhaps, but it wasn’t imposed upon me either. I didn’t have to stay so locked in my own world; so determined to complete my shopping trip as efficiently as possible.

Compassion is an act between people. It’s not something we experience when having an exchange with say a toaster, blender, or lawn mower. We don’t experience compassion with machines. And yes, I don’t know exactly why or how Dr. Preston was so disarmingly compassionate toward me.

But, what I do know is that she was there. She was fully there. She wasn’t going through the motions of her veterinary checklist. Her actions acknowledged that there were other living things she was engaging with. At a minimum, she was in a position to be compassionate, just by choosing to do that.

To be compassionate, we must withdraw from the inner world of our thoughts, chores, checklists, and daydreams. Even if I don’t know much about compassion, I do know this: we have to be fully with the people and creatures around us to be compassionate. That’s where compassion starts.