After I’ve spent the better part of two hours avoiding putting any actual effort into my sport, I'm back in street clothes. My mom had driven me home, and I saw my dog, Disco, running up to me. Disco was a German Shepherd with beautiful golden brown fur, a black back, and a tail with a small white tip. She had loving brown eyes and she always had a smile on her face. Currently, she had a bulging ear, kind of like a boxer’s. Whenever she would run the swollen ear would bop up and down, I felt bad for her, but her persistent smile read that she didn’t mind all too much.
Seeing Disco run up to me, I ended up reminded of the day I first got her. It was Christmas day, 2007. She was just a puppy at the time, and her knack for always smiling and showing love for every person she met had already begun. Being happy with my trip down memory lane, I bend down and I start to pet Disco. I grab her furry checks and I say to her in a voice that’s a little bit high pitched, “Hey Disco! How’s my furry baby doing?”
I stand up and I find her red rubber ball, it’s her favorite toy, one that she would go to the ends of the Earth for. I take the ball making sure she saw that I had grabbed it, then I throw it in the yard and I say in my high pitched voice again, “Go get the ball Disco! Go get it!” Disco made a light attempt to go after the ball, but she gave up quickly and went to go lay down in the shade.
    That’s weird, Disco always goes after her ball, I hope she’s  feeling okay.
I gave Disco hug hoping that she feels better. My worry, however, is soon dismissed from my mind when I smell dinner, so I went inside to go eat.
As the sun moved to the west to stay with the people of the Pacific Coast, I was greeted with a sky that was as black as ash. By now I’m doing my homework, or at least I’m supposed to be doing it, I figure there's no point doing the extra work if there's no fun involved. At this point, both of my parents have gone out to go see some friends that live out of town, they’re going to spend the night and won’t be back until the next day. This meant that on that night it was just me, and my brother Cody. So while I was upstairs on the computer listening to music and watching some videos on youtube, Cody was downstairs watching TV. Eventually, sometime during the night Disco limps by Cody and Lays down in the middle of the room, she starts to breathe heavy. Cody turns off the TV and yells up to me, “Hey, I think There's something wrong with Disco.” I rush downstairs to see what’s wrong. Using all of my knowledge of biology, and medical science (which is practically zero) I determine that Disco is completely fine.
“She’s okay. You’re just a little sick aren’t you Disco?” Once again, I say the last part in my high pitched voice as if I’m addressing a toddler.  I rub her furry face and I kiss her on her forehead. She looks at me and beamed up like she always does.
Disco’s okay, she probably ate something weird that she found in the yard, like a dead squirrel. She’s going to be completely fine.  
I go back upstairs to the computer, thoroughly convinced that Disco is going to be okay. My brother; the realist wasn’t as convinced by my diagnosis of Disco, so unannounced, to me he called my parents to ask them what we should do… They didn’t pick up.
As watching youtube videos got to be boring, I decided that I was going to start to play some guitar. I wasn’t very good, but I played anyways. I look over to my left and I see the PSAT study packet next to me, I actually forgot that the PSAT was the next day.
Maybe I should study for the test, it could be helpful. After all, the SAT is an important test and if you’re ready for the practice test,  you’re  sure to be ready for the real thing. JK .LOL. RAWR. XD.  Just kidding, no way I’m wasting my time on that. I like to actually enjoy my free time. And besides, you don’t even care if you fail the real SAT, so you sure don’t care if you fail the PSAT.
After making myself laugh with my little pep talk, I’m back to playing guitar. It wasn’t even tuned correctly but I still thought that I was the next Eddie Van Halen.

The minute hand races around its never-ending loop, and I decide to stop actively creating callused fingertips and head downstairs to check on Disco. I figure that although she’s going to be fine, she’s still not feeling too good and could use a hug. But when I get within six feet of Disco I begin to hear something. “ BA BUM!... BA BUM!... BA BUM!”  It was the sound of a heavy drum, pummeling in the distance. The silence in the room was broken with a piercing blade that found it’s way into my ears. I noticed then that the beats were slow and they were getting slower, and that’s when I realized those drums, where the sound of my dog’s heart. A heart that was slow and fading, yet fighting with all of the power that it could muster. 
I hugged Disco and I whispered,“ you’re going to be okay Disco”, I didn’t use my high pitched toddler voice, and that’s probably because I was trying to tell myself that as opposed to Disco. I embrace her once again, and I whisper into her ear,“I love you.”
I hurry upstairs and I google “What’s wrong with my dog?” After an I sift through the useless yahoo answers and Reddit posts, I find a website that asks you to list the symptoms your dog is experiencing and then it’ll give you a list of possible conditions. So I typed out everything wrong with her that I could see, and the website gave me the list of what might be wrong. Every single condition told me that death was soon to occur. Every. Single. One. It was at this moment that I knew that that night was going to be like an Adam Sandler; full of disappointment.

I began to try to find a condition that declared that Disco was going to be okay and that my original diagnosis was correct. Cody was downstairs taking care of Disco, and petting her when suddenly, she collapses on the floor. Cody yells up to me, “Disco just fell down!!” I ran to the top of the stairs to see my dog lying on the ground twitching, with my brother on his knees above her.
Holy Hell, what the @%$# do I do!?
“Is she breathing!?” I yell down, praying that she is.
Cody puts his ear to Disco’s chest to listen to hear her lungs, “No she’s not, and her heart isn’t beating either. Do you know CPR?”
“No”, I respond to Cody nearly in tears.  Quickly I run to the computer and yell, “Hold on one second!”, I googled as fast as I could, “How do you give CPR to a dog?”
“Hurry!!”, Cody yelled up to me.
“ I’m coming!”, I yell back after I’ve absorbed as much helpful information as could in the short few seconds I could. As I run to Disco I yell to Cody, “Is there anything blocking her throat!?”
Cody checks down her windpipe to  see what he could see, “Nothing.”
“Okay...”
Great, that means we have to try CPR. If she were choking we could probably do the Heimlich, but now I have to improvise.
“ Okay... Okay dammit. Let me try something.” I put my hands together, I get on my knees and I put my hands on Disco’s chest, it’s stiff and cold. I can feel her twitch beneath my fingers, and I push all of the thoughts of doubt and fear out of my head. This is important, Disco’s life has to be saved. And so I stop being Julius the boy, and I become Julius the man because he’s the only person who has the strength to do what has to be done. I push down. My first attempt at a chest compression and both me and Cody hear Disco breath.
We looked at each other. Cody asked, “Is she…?”
I respond after a second of silence. “I think she just…”, I didn’t finish my statement because I didn’t have to. Both Cody and I knew what happened, Disco wasn’t breathing, all I had done was push the last breath of air out of her lungs.
We don’t have time for any to be absorbed into the pain, we knew that Disco’s life was bigger than that. Cody took over my position of giving the chest compressions, and I had taken up the role of giving her mouth to mouth. I lifted her head up to get a better position, her neck was stiff. Now one of the things you should know about giving mouth to mouth to a dog is that you don’t breath into the mouth, you close the mouth and breath into the dog’s nose. So when I put my lips on Disco’s nostrils, I had noticed that her nose was cold and dry.
Weird I would have thought that a dog’s nose would have been moist when she dies.
For the next ten minutes, me and my brother worked as makeshift Frankensteins, trying to bring life back to the dead. We took turns, Cody would give three chest compressions, and that’s when I would catch my breath. Then I would breathe into Disco’s mouth, while I did that, I could hear her lungs fill with my breath. The entire time Disco’s eyes were open, unfeeling and not responding to light.
About seven minutes into the amateur attempt of a CPR, Cody heard me sniffling, I was in tears, and Disco didn’t have time for me to feel the pain quite yet, “Stop crying.” Cody didn’t look at me when he told me that, he stayed focused on the task at hand.
“But she’s…” I muddled beneath the sobs.
“Just keep giving her mouth to mouth” Cody commanded. I obeyed, realizing that Cody was right, this was bigger than me and my tears, if I stopped to cry Disco may be lost forever.
The whole endeavor ended when we heard Disco’s flatulence. That’s true, I usually don’t tell this part of the story, but it’s how me and my brother realized that the battle was lost. You see when the body dies several things happen, one of those being that involuntary muscles are released. Some of these muscles are in the bowels, and when the muscles in the bowels are released whatever that was trapped in the bowels is also released. So when we heard Disco’s flatulence, me and my brother knew that the battle was lost.

Cody was at the top of the stairs and began talking to me, “Julius, It’s too warm down here. The decomposition process has already started. See how bloated she is?”
He’s right she looks inflated, I can’t believe I didn’t notice that until he pointed that out.
“That bloating is gas in her body, and it’s going to get worse. If we don’t move fast we are going to have to deal with body fluids coming out of her. We have to get her the garage, it’s colder in there which will slow decomposition down, and if any fluids do leak it’ll be easier to clean.”
In my tears, I find my voice is weak and faint. “Okay.” Realizing how feebly I responded I try again this time with a little more vigor. “Okay.” My voice is still quiet, but it’s an improvement over my first attempt.
It seemed that me and Cody had to shift Disco's body, which was no easy task. The average German shepherd is about seventy-one pounds, Disco was over a hundred. Her body was stiff at this point which only made the job more difficult. Being makeshift pallbearers we tried our best to carry Disco upstairs and through the kitchen and out the door to the garage. We bumped her against the wall once and against a cabinet twice despite our efforts to be careful, but we managed to get the job done.
Looking down for a moment I made a decision. “I’m going to get her toys” I figured she would want to have her favorite toys close by. So I got up and I went outside to gather all of the toys that were scattered around the yard. Her red and blue balls were her favorite. Then there was her pink dog stuffed animal, I had won that for her in an arcade claw machine, every time she tore it open, I would put the stuffing back and sew it back up for her. Then there was one of her first toys, a Santa chew toy, we had gotten Disco on Christmas, and her first toys were all Christmas themed. I laid them next to her body lying her favorites closest to her.

I laid beside Disco, petting face, and looking into her eyes. Once again, I tried to close them, unsurprisingly they open up to greet me. As I sat there, I heard the sound of bagpipes dancing through the house. As it turns out, while I was petting Disco, Cody had gotten on the computer and started to play “Going Home”, a traditional funeral song played for fallen soldiers and friends as a way to say goodbye. And that’s when everything that happened over the night finally felt real.
I… I… I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that she’s gone. She was my dog, and I love her. I don’t know … I don’t know how this is possible.
Through the music, I went upstairs to my room and grabbed my bible. I went to read Disco her last rights, and perform a funeral. But I couldn’t read a single verse, the tears in my eyes prevented me from being able to read more than one word. My eyes went foggy and dense. And there was no way to read the pages of the Good Book, no matter how often I tried to wipe my face dry. My tears dripped off my face and landed on the pages of The Bible, staining the paper.
I closed the book, figuring that Cody’s Scottish send off would be more appropriate than any Catholic funeral I would end up blubbering through. As I sat with Disco stroking her cold face, I noticed something, her eyes were empty. And while I did notice that fact prior, I didn’t notice it like this. I saw that there was life in those eyes when she was still with us, but with her gone, I knew that the body I was next to was just that; a body. An empty shell with nothing inside. I was a fool to not see that life in her eyes before, it’s just one of the many beauties I take for granted in a day to day.  The beauty in the eyes of everyone is just one thing that I overlooked while I was trying to convince myself that the universe was meaningless, but no more, I see that light in the eyes of everyone I know now.
 

After about five minutes, I heard the phone ring. I went to pick it up to hear my mother’s voice. I don’t remember exactly what was mentioned in the conversation, but I remember that she brought up that they were heading back home and that everything was going to be okay. When we finished talking I gave the phone to my brother, then I went to my room and fell into tears
After my bout of tears, I found Cody was off the phone. I told him I was going to bed. Cody told me that he was going to bed too. And that’s when Cody told me something I still carry with me to this day. “Stay strong.”
“Stay strong.” It was the last time me and Cody spoke to each other for several days, after all, after what we had gone through together, there wasn’t all too much we could talk about.
As I started to drift off to sleep a thought came to mind.
We just bought a brand new bag of dog food.
With that thought, I chuckled to myself. Then I cried. Then I lost all consciousness. I had some fantastic sleep that night. My goodnight’s rest was due to the fact that Disco wasn’t the only one who died that night. I died too. And a new me was born, one that valued what he had, and mourned that which he had lost.

My alarm woke me up with a jump as it always does. It’s Wednesday, April 13th, and upon our wake, Cody and I met our parents. After some hugs, tears, and some explanations of what happened on that horrible haunted hour, my parents told us we didn’t have to go school that day. Despite the fact that I didn't want to show my face in the school after what had happened, I decided it would be best if I went.
Julius, you can not let this define your life. You will not crawl into some kind of depression and hide your face from the world. Go to school, and go to the meet dammit! Be a man and overcome this.
Before we got in the Jeep to go to school, we went into the garage to see Disco one last time, I memorized all of the details of her face because that would be the last time I would ever get a chance to see her. That day when I was at school my dad would bury her next to the rest of our fallen pets, and despite my being adamant towards going to school. A part of me wishes I could have helped him bury Disco. But the fact is I couldn’t do both, and I stand by my choice to go to school.
When we got the school, my Mom told me she loved me, and I had responded in kind. Then turning my head to the doors of my town’s Junior High school, I take my first step into the world as a new man. A man who is both broken and complete, a man who is weak and strong, a man who is both dead and alive.
I walked into the school I saw my best friend, Glen. And after spending a night with a million pounds being carried on my back I hugged him and I fell into tears. It was the only thing I could do, I told him what happened to Disco, and he sat with me, and helped me make it through the day.
The rest of the school day was kind of boring and not exactly noteworthy until the track meet. My heart pumped with the power of a plow horse. My lungs burned with blistering air, the side of my torso got a sharp and heavy pain, and I could never seem to get enough air no matter how much I gasped. Sweat beaded down my head into my eyes, they burned with the diluted salt. But I knew I wasn’t going to die, I realized that the night before. Death isn’t when your heart is fast, you’re hot, and sweaty. Death is when your heart is slow, you’re cold, and dry.
I guess in the end it took a tragedy to see how childish and immature I was, and with Disco gone, I finally took the step from being that nihilistic child to the thoughtful man I am. I will never be the person I was, I don’t think it’s possible to go through something like that and not change in some way. I’m just happy that I managed to change for the better.
It’s a year and a half later, and my girlfriend has broken up with me, but I’m not upset with that. You see I can’t be upset with a breakup, because I cherished the moments me and her had together, and I lived in the moment during the four months we were together. I believe I would never have started to date her in the first place if I didn’t learn to appreciate all of the beauty in life. And I would never have learned how to appreciate that beauty in life without Disco. I have more friends than ever before, I guess it just goes to show that when you see the world through narrow tunnels, you tend not to notice the people outside who are waiting for you. I'm also doing better with my grades, and in classes. After Disco died I came to realize that when you see the world as meaningless, you don't exactly try hard anymore, after all, what's the point of working hard at something when even Rome turns to dust. But that viewpoint isn't me anymore, it's just something I used to believe in until I opened my eyes.
I see now that it is true that eventually, we are all going to perish, but that doesn’t mean that we should hide away from life, and it doesn’t mean that life has no meaning. No, if anything, the fact that we are all going to die just goes to show how much meaning we have in this life. We leave people behind and they grow to miss us. I won’t forget that day, and because of that beautiful disaster, I found the real meaning of life and death. The beauty in death is the thing that gives us true beauty and meaning in life.