We got Ruby, our seven-month old pup, fixed last week. To say goodbye to her at the vet and know she’d be having major surgery reminded me again just how little control we have. Thankfully, she came through like a trooper and aside from her sad (though somehow adorable) little cone and some itchy stitches, she’s doing just fine.

Wishes are pushing up through the grass all over Santiago this spring.

We did have one rough night where the only thing that seemed to calm her down was sleeping with me on the couch. We don’t usually let her up on the furniture, but I realized there was little I wouldn’t do to take away her pain and discomfort. I thought of my mom who was always there when I was sick, telling me to give her the pain so I could get better. At the time, I didn’t know what she meant, but thanks to a child’s imagination and willing belief, I didn’t question either. I just closed my eyes and thought about where the pain lived in my body, whether it was a stomach’s ache or a leg’s growing pains, and pictured it sort of evaporating into little bubbles that could float over to her. I never thought she would “catch” my pain herself; I just thought moms were better equipped to handle and dispose of those pain bubbles.

As Ruby’s mom, a couple of things are not lost on me this week:

Sleepy Cone Girl.

First, I’m not nursing my own child through his pain and discomfort. I am not preparing to hand him to a surgeon for his first, violent open-heart surgery. That is if he would have made it that far. I am not by his side as he recovers from that first surgery, if he would have survived it. That is not the path, though it’s also a parallel one now. I no longer just imagine the healthy boy reaching milestones like smiles and steps and silliness. That healthy boy was never going to be. Now, I imagine the boy with the sick heart. Though, in order to be truthful to the reality of HLHS, I have to also imagine losing that boy at any step along the way… soon after birth, soon after the first surgery or the second or the third, or suddenly out of the blue without warning. Though what are long hospital stays, infections, blood clots, strokes, brain and nervous system damage, and additional surgeries to handle the secondary complications if they are not warnings?

Three Kings of sorts, holding court outside the largest mall in the city–and all of South America.

Second, Ruby will never be a mother. It’s not nearly as common to spay or neuter your pet in Chile as it is back in the U.S. The dozen or so savvy, gnarled street dogs I see on any given day are evidence of that. Had we not rescued Ruby, she would likely be a street dog herself by now, as her dad was, because the family we adopted her from wouldn’t have been able to keep eight dogs in their yard. While we saved her from that, in some way we sacrificed her motherhood in order to do so.

She’s still just a pup herself. It wouldn’t be advised for her to conceive until she’d gone through a few heats anyway, and Ryan and I are not in the dog-breeding business! But as I sit here, wishing and trying to be pregnant myself, I can’t help but wonder if we’ve deprived her of something. Do dogs mourn the loss of their ability to reproduce as we humans might? Will there come a day when she feels something is missing from her life? Will she have to do some soul-searching to get through it? Rationally, I know the answers to these questions. I know she’ll continue to have a good life here with us, complete with tennis ball chases and long walks where we stop and say hello to the neighborhood dogs, and lots and lots and lots of love.

Sitting pretty.

I want to mother and I know the fact that we have Ruby came out of that maternal instinct going from being so very close to fulfillment to being so suddenly and tragically deprived. I was left with a hole so large it felt more expansive than my very person’s ability to contain it. I was now an occupant of the hole, and I was going to have to start somewhere new and frightening in order to fill back up. I’m nowhere near full, but getting Ruby 18 days after we lost Lorenzo has helped. As it turns out, we also got her on the 20th, three months to the day before Lorenzo was due to be born.

There are several days of the month that now mark an anniversary of some sort in relation to this experience of grieving. On the 28th, we got the bad news. On the 2nd, Lorenzo came into the world as he did. On the 20th, he was due to be born and, going forward, be maybe a month or a year old. I have to meet these days from here on out, though they don’t always undo me. A random 5th or 13th or 22nd can undo me just as easily. It’s not about the number; it’s about this hole that will only ever be so full now. Fullness has to mean something altogether different because I am not the person I was before. My husband is not the person he was before. Because Lorenzo is not his person. And he is not replaceable.

Getting back to her playful self with Birdie, part of a little care package from my mom.

So, I take care of Ruby Girl. I give her the love I have to give and make her life as good as I can. I wonder if she has any idea about the goodness she brings to our lives. We did the responsible thing and got her fixed, but there are so many new feelings to bring to bear on even that act. There is a consciousness of giving life to another, at least biologically. Well, I’ll be if she hasn’t given life to me and I haven’t given life to her. So, there must be so many ways to inhabit motherhood. There must be.