The Long Goodbye

Home Is Where the Heart Is

My favorite place to write this note has always been the living room sofa, with my best friend and loyal companion, Sucre, snuggled up next to me. Only, today, her beautiful, warm body is not there. Sucre left us a week ago, and I find myself strangely untethered—unsure of myself without her, to the point that I pray for the confidence and wherewithal that I can finish this note.

For nearly sixteen years, Sucre was mine, and I was hers. We were an interesting pair: adorable, comical, absurd, and occasionally annoying—sometimes all at once. Before Sucre, I was always amused by Chihuahua owners and the peculiar intensity of their devotion. Soon after becoming one myself, I never questioned it again. A Chihuahua-Pekingese mix, known as a Pekachi or Cheek, she understood some two hundred words and possessed more personality than many creatures ten times her size. She was regal, funny, bold, fiercely loyal, and impossibly sweet.

Sucre arrived only two years after we began publishing VIE. Her name—the French word for “sugar”—suited her, though she accumulated an assortment of aliases to match the mood of the moment: Sooky, Coconut, Monkey, Bubbagum, Snook-a-Doodles, and, of course, Baby. As VIE’s mascot, she knew a great many people, and they knew her. Life at a lifestyle magazine also made her an unexpectedly seasoned traveler. Her journeys took her to Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston, Charleston, Chattanooga, Napa Valley, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Palm Beach, San Diego, San Francisco, Savannah, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. She even served as guest editor of one of our animal-themed issues, which featured Alaqua Refuge Sanctuary founder Laurie Hood on the cover. www.viemagazine.com/article/sucre-says

My husband, Jerry, and I were not blessed with children, and we believed Sucre had been heaven-sent to fill that place in our family. Caring for her was a privilege. In return, she gave us love, comfort, strength, and unwavering loyalty. She also possessed an astonishing talent for survival. There were so many close calls that we joked she must be part cat. The first came when she was three months old, outside our office, where a red ant bit her above the paw. I brushed it away at once, but within a minute she had gone into anaphylactic shock. As Jerry raced us to the nearest emergency veterinarian, Sucre looked up at me as if asking for help. I begged God to let her live. My mother was dying of cancer then, and I could not bear the thought of losing them both. Sucre survived that day, miraculously, and every frightening episode that followed. Again and again, she returned to us.

Over the years, however, the ailments accumulated, and her final diagnosis was the gravest. Because I had watched her rise like Lazarus so many times, I had mistaken resilience for permanence. I knew, of course, that the day would come; love makes such knowledge unavoidable. Still, I never truly believed there would be an illness she could not outrun, until the hour arrived when she could no longer beat the odds.

About a year ago, after one of Sucre’s later scares, my friends Madra McDonald of M Public Relations and Libby Baker Speight of Baker Designs learned that I feared a farewell to my cherished companion was approaching. Both understood the particular grief of losing a beloved family dog. A few months later, they invited me to lunch and presented me with an exquisitely heartfelt memorial for the day Sucre would pass. She seemed so well then that accepting it felt almost disloyal. Yet somewhere beneath that hope, I knew the day was rounding the curve. Four months later, it arrived.

Now I am learning the quiet geography of her absence: the vacant place on the sofa, the interrupted routines, the silence where companionship once lived. Sucre was pure joy. Many of you will know this sorrow—the loss of an animal who was never merely a pet, but family; a small, steadfast presence who transformed a house into a home. For most of Sucre’s life, I believed I had rescued her. Only now do I understand the arrangement more clearly: she was the one who rescued me.

Thank you, Sucre, for letting me be your mommy. I will love you forever.

To Life!

—Lisa Marie Burwell

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