Pacquito Forever

Sort of suddenly, sort of not (for a nearly 18-year-old Chihuahua with a few progressive illnesses), Pacquito left his body around 11pm on December 29, 2025.

The last taste on his tongue was a drop of honey.

I had been agonizing and crying and grieving for the three days prior. He's fallen ill before, and it really has been in his nature to ding-dong-ditch Death's door. This time felt a bit different, especially given his age. I still hoped he may bounce back. It wouldn't have been the first, second, or third time I was sure he was about to die.

Only Pacquito would make his very last act of back-to-normal energy to hork down his dinner, have a taste of honey, then go into complete heart failure.

J was with us from across the globe via video (I never thought I'd say this, but truly, thank god for technology), guiding me through this sacred act of seeing my beloved little TT boy into the next. Pacquito, of course, did not need guidance. Still, I told him that he could let go, that I loved him over and over again, not that he hadn't heard my love and felt my kisses almost every day for the last 18 years.

My body shook uncontrollably as I continued to stroke Pacquito's little body on his bed. I could hear J saying that Pacquito was leaving, leaving, on the most beautiful journey we can't possibly fathom, and gone. The shaking stopped immediately, at the very same moment as Pacquito's breath. We are all mirrors.

After a while of wondering if this had really happened, wondering if he was still actually breathing, thinking my mind was playing some psychedelic trick on me and that his body was actually moving, feeling for a pulse and unsure whether the life in my hand was the life in his body, I said, "I think I should open the door so his spirit can leave."

"You don't need to. His spirit went into yours," J said. The life in my hand was the life in his body and the life in his body was the life in my hand. It is all the same.

I breathed deeply and as I felt life in death, movement in stillness, I knew it to be true.

This place has never been more quiet. Not this kind of quiet. But instead of a heaviness, there is a softness, a lightness, that I both can and can't believe I feel.

It all worked out perfectly, if one can say that about dying, about death. That I was here with him, to have the privilege of holding him and loving him as he moved into the next realm, that his last moments were not being poked by some stranger under bright and ugly lighting which he would have absolutely fucking hated. That I was looking into his eyes and staying right there with him.

A day or so before, after a little, very early morning episode of his, I was journaling, reflecting on how it came to me that my job in all this was to sit with everything: to not turn away from the discomfort of what was happening, of what was going to happen; to know that it was my attachment to Pacquito's life that was creating such anguish within me. And in the moments of his dying, at the very moment of his death, I can say that I did not turn away for one millisecond. I was right there with him, and it was beautiful, holy.

I stayed with him a while, just us, and prayed and chanted and thanked him.

In this moment, I can't believe he's not here anymore. He was just here, prancing around, flirting with his bowl of food, looking like a young pup and some of the time really acting like one.

I left to take his body to my parents' house three minutes away, and in the night sky I saw this brightly lit cloud. It's him! I knew that to be true, too. It was even clearer from my parents' driveway. A sign.

Then, at 1:11 am, I looked at my phone, and saw my background (a live picture of Pacquito looking out the car window onto the Pacific), and an affirmation which read "I am the light."

He is with me always, will be with me forever.

"This grief is love, this grief is love, this grief is love," I wrote in my journal yesterday.

Today I know that this love is love, this love is love, this love is love.

I feel his freedom from his body, from illness, from the finite to the infinite.

What is there to grieve, after all?

These tears are not of sadness. They are of such peace and immense gratitude for the time I had with him, a whole 18 years of this crazy, sweet, shy, aloof, little alien doggy who was so, so loved by so many. I am grateful for all the love that he received while he was here. I don't think any of us ever took him for granted. I do think, though, since I kept saying I wanted to throw him an 18th birthday party in February complete with taco trucks and a mariachi band, that he would have rather literally died than go through that.

In the end, his heart was too big for his body, but mine could never be big enough to hold my love for him.

In loving honor of my little baby TT boy, Pacquito. You are everything, forever.

February 2008 - December 2025