Spirit Farers
on grief & love
Trigger warning: death
A note on name: 暴龙 (T-rex), pronounced as Bao-long. Nicknamed 龙 (dino or dragon).
I ran to him the moment I got home. In the backyard, I found his fluffy, shriveled body curled against the grass. He sensed my arrival, tried to stand up to welcome me but kept crumpling. His tail struggled to lift. I held him in my arms. How can there be so much life at one moment and completely gone the next?
By then, he had not eaten for a week and lost the strength to walk. The vet said with kidney failures, the goodbye usually comes a week after the dog stops eating.
In the morning, my aunt carried him outside, burned an incense, sat next to him and chased away the bugs. I heard a whimpering sound and saw his body twitching, perhaps in pain, but mostly he just wanted to stand up and walk towards us. All his life, he just wanted to be close to us. I used to accidentally step on him because he was always around, like my fluffy shadow.
At sunset, she carried him home and lovingly sponged his body on his sleeping mat. She turned him over, dipped a towel in warm water and tended to him with gentle strokes. “Why is this spot still not clean?” she mumbled, patient with his matted fur, as if she could scrub away what was coming. His emaciated head feebly fit into the palm of her hand, his body only skin and bone.
*
Days before my flight from London to Shanghai, the thought of seeing Baolong soon but for the final time filled me with a sadness I’d never known. After hearing the news of his illness, I began crying at different times while doing different things, consumed by the goodbye I would never be ready for. The thing about grief is, it’s messy, wet, everything and nothing all at once. But no matter how much we’ve grieved before, we never get good at it.
I cried to Sacha on the phone the night I arrived home. The pain in my chest felt like splitting. I wasn’t ready to lose my best friend who’d grown up with me for the past 14 years. A best friend with whom love never needed language.
“Go give him some kisses, one for me.” Sacha said on the phone. I crawled out of bed, walked to the corner where he perched and lay down on the floor next to him and held him close. I kissed his bunched up hair. The tears on my face made his hair messier. His black fur was mixed with gray, yellow around his mouth. His front tooth was crooked from when he was still a puppy — one day he was so excited to welcome us that a tooth got latched onto a button on our coat. Maybe it takes grey hair, annoyance, brokenness, imperfections, ugly-to-everyone-else-but-ourselves to realize how deeply we can love someone.
I whispered into his ears again and again I would always love him, and I would always miss him. I cried myself to sleep, unable to imagine a world without him. There would never again be paws scratching on the door to wake me in the morning.
*
After the diagnosis, my aunt drove him down the memory lane of his almost 15 years of life. Old neighborhoods, the building where his girlfriend Lulu lived. He was a naughty influence, always teaching Lulu street behavior, like drinking from a dirty pond.
*
Baolong died the next day.
We buried him by the riverbank, in the roots of a young tree cradled by hydrangea. Two black umbrellas sheltered the four of us as rain trailed down our sleeves. We dug a pit in the soft earth — his ashes and his favorite snacks, a chubby black poodle reduced to a pouch smaller than a Coca-Cola can. My uncle carved “龙” into the slender trunk.
*
In the days after he died, we recounted our favorite memories. That one time he picked up the phone when we weren’t home — he’d swatted the landline onto the floor and barked into the receiver. That one time he scared a thief away. Sometimes, Baolong would kick in his sleep; we’d watch, holding our breath so as not to wake him, hoping he was running freely on a prairie or chasing his favorite snacks. He never liked to look into the mirror — we thought maybe he didn’t want to see that he looked different from us.
On a walk with Baolong and my aunt one summer day, I mentioned that he’d started to resemble her disposition. My aunt laughed. “So what does the resemblance look like?”
It looks like being intertwined with another life until you’ve absorbed each other’s dearest qualities and dissolved all the flaws — until you can’t remember who you were before.
*
We are spirit farers, ferrying from this life into the unknown. We find one another in the mist — by fate, by grace — and travel together for as long as time gives.
A black furry ball of joy, you grew up with us yet grew old before we did. Life moves on different timelines, and I’m forever grateful to have met you. You taught me joy, partnership, and home-making. My dear love, I pray to accompany you through this life, the next one, and every life to come.
*
He gazed into my aunt’s eyes before swallowing his last breath.
How do the past 15 years flash before your eyes?
How does it feel to know only those you love the most?
Love is watching someone as you die.
*
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Afterword
Baolong passed away on June 1st. Over four months, words slowly coalesced as my heart gushed out into this piece: I wrote on the subway, on the plane, at my desk; in public, in conversations, and in my mind. The sadness may have become less piercing, but the grief hasn’t faded a tinge — because my love stays the same. What does healing look like? Accepting the inevitability of departure, but missing him just the same.
Erica
October 2025
RIP Baolong
♥️