Oliver the King, Our Kitchen Floor, and Death

Oliver, the 190 lbs. Newfoundland, the Reluctant Lifeguard, and The Kitchen Floor
or, How Grief, Prostate Cancer, and Canine Flatulence Collided on Cold Tile

Oliver was born into a litter of six. He was the only survivor—a fact that may have given him a sense of existential entitlement or perhaps just a lifelong suspicion that the universe had tried to cancel him early and failed. Either way, he lived like a monarch who had clawed his way to the throne by sheer girth and charisma. All 185 lbs of him ruled our home with the quiet, lumbering authority of a hairy demigod who had no need for speed, logic, or humility.

Oliver didn’t die. Not quickly. Not nobly. He faded like the end credits of a film that had gone on too long but you weren’t ready to stop watching. And when the moment came, it wasn’t a thunderclap. It was a choice. Our choice. The ultimate betrayal wrapped in love and necessity. And it nearly broke us.

They say dogs know when it’s time. Oliver didn’t. Or if he did, he wasn’t telling us. He just stared with those huge eyes, asking questions we couldn’t answer. Like, “Why does standing hurt?” Or, “Why did God make stairs?” Or maybe, more accurately, “Are we all going to sleep on the kitchen floor again, because I could really go for some co-suffering and a midnight cheese stick.”

Yes, Oliver. We did.

For eight months, the kitchen became a hospice. Not a metaphorical one—a literal one, lined with blankets and dog bowls and the smell of liniment and wet fur. The tile slowly formed itself into our shared confessional: three souls clinging to something bigger than comfort. We spooned 185 lbs of failing dog. We whispered absurdities. We kissed his stupid, slobbery face like he was a relic. He was. A relic of unconditional presence.

And in that same stretch of months, something else festered. Deep in my pelvis, a gland plotted its insurgency. Prostate cancer: the silent, squatting houseguest that refuses to leave and occasionally urinates on your rug. It didn’t feel right to compare Oliver’s decline to mine—but it also felt dishonest not to. Because watching him fade as I entered my own medical thunderdome blurred the lines between species and sorrow.

Choosing to let Oliver go was the worst best decision I’ve ever made. And if you’ve ever signed the paper, nodded the final nod, held a paw while the vet gently ends a life—that weight stays with you. Not guilt. But the unbearable clarity of power. That haunting moment when you realize: you get to choose the day someone dies. You, trembling mortal, with your grief-shaped heart and your sense of mercy, become judge and executioner in the name of love.

Prostate cancer doesn’t offer that kind of control. There’s no paperwork that says, “Let’s end this before it gets undignified.” There’s just a slow erosion—testosterone assassinated monthly, radiation zapping you into clinical irrelevance, and the hope that it’s “working,” whatever that means. Every check-up becomes a roulette wheel. Every scan a horoscope written in shadows. You don’t choose your moment with cancer. It chooses you, possibly during a colonoscopy, which feels metaphorically appropriate.

But with Oliver… we got to choose. And it ruined us. And it healed something too.

And today—of all days—after weeks of grim, grey skies hanging like a migraine over our house, today is bright. The sun is out. A perfect spring day. No clouds. No drizzle. No meteorological empathy. Just blinding, mocking beauty. The kind of day Oliver would have spent sulking indoors, convinced the sunlight was plotting against him. But it fits, doesn’t it? That the day we release the king back to the ether is the one day the heavens dare to look cheerful. A cosmic joke with teeth.

Now, the kitchen is just a kitchen again. The floor is colder. Emptier. No royal presence, no tail-induced bruises, no late-night moaning from either canine or human. But sometimes, in the silence, I lie down there again. Just for a moment. To remember. To weep, maybe. Or just to feel what devotion on a linoleum floor feels like, without a diagnosis, without a leash, without the weight of a dog or a dying prostate pressing down.

Long live Oliver, the reluctant lifeguard.
Long live all the kings who never wanted to have prostate cancer.