My dog, Rowley, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, or bone cancer, on Friday the 13th. The day before, I woke up from a series of dreams about reconciliation. All of my lost friends, all of the estranged characters from my life I still love and think about, were hugging me and making up. I woke up and these words came into my head: "Today is the end of grieving." I thought the phrase all day, because it was September 12th, 2002, and it seemed like a good day for grieving to end. That night I talked to my friend from the Midwest who fancies herself a surfer, just as my stepfather in the Midwest fancies himself a sailor. I told her I had had strange dreams the night before, but didn't mention the phrase. "I did too," she said. "And when I woke up part of a Buddhist phrase passed through my head. Just a fragment of it. 'The end of suffering.'" Then I told her about my phrase, how our words wound together and overlapped. When I got off the phone, I wrote on my page-a-day calendar, "The end of suffering in here." I wrote it on Friday the 13th. It was the first thing I saw after receiving the call, the call about my dog and his cancer.

I can't remember how the x-rays were described. Osteosarcoma has a classic appearance, something like a sunflower, or snowflake. It is "aggressive," they say. It eats away at the bone. Stepping off a curb can cause a fracture. Amputation must come quickly. Even then, 98 percent of dogs have cancer elsewhere in their bodies, on a microscopic level if not full-blown metastasis. Metastasis -- I see it like a sunflower, or a snowflake, some kind of awful bloom.

Today Rowley checked into the hospital. He rarely barks, hardly ever, but he barked incessantly in the waiting room. Not a nervous bark at all, a buoyant bark. He was ready. He was excited about the acoustics. He wanted to make sure everyone heard his unique and booming voice.

Rowley fancies himself a beachcomber. He was born on Barbados. As I stayed up at night with him and listened to him whimper and tried to ease his pain, I told him about the first time we went to the ocean. There, he was contemplative. He sat back on his haunches and stared at the waves. He didn't run around, didn't yap, just got the biggest Buddha smile on his face and took it all in. "The ocean smelled like a big barrel of fish," I told him. "The biggest barrel of fish you have ever seen." He looked in my eyes. He needed a marlin of a fish tale. He loves tales of fish, his very favorite food. "We'll go there soon," I told him then (and it's true). "And you'll never run out of fish."