1.

Money died today.

In the pale morning light, the wind lifted his fur, and for a moment I almost believed his chest would rise if I just kept watching.

We’d known since the vet visit two weeks ago—cancerous tumor, internal bleeding, only days to weeks left—and we tried to prepare, if that’s even possible. Some scary nights we sat with him outside, as if waiting for him to die: begging him to stay while also wishing his pain would end.

This is Money’s story—the best of us: big, silly, happy, a little bit dumb, and incredibly sweet.

2.

More than anything, Money was sweet. We brought him home as a puppy in November of 2015, when I was in 5th grade, and it was so easy to call him my best friend. He had large, clumsy paws, and for weeks one ear remained softer and floppier than the other, as if refusing to grow up.

We already had another German Shepherd, Momo. She has always been reserved, even cold at times, and even after a decade, Money remains the only dog to ever get through to her. As a puppy, he adopted Momo as his mom, and even when he grew much larger than her, he followed her everywhere. On walks, he sniffed wherever she sniffed, though I doubt he ever understood what he was smelling. He tried very hard to initiate playfights just to always lose, ending belly-up and tongue out. Even near the end, he still followed Momo as if he were a little kid imitating his mother. “Synchronized,” my friends would call them.

money would let momo drink first

nap time

So we’ve always viewed him as incredibly loving and social: he would whine when he was separated from Momo. With Momo growing old, we brought home another German Shepherd puppy in December last year, Mega (short for Megasaurus Rex), so that Money would always have company even if she passed. And Money, being so unconditionally friendly to people and other dogs alike, was a best friend to Mega. Mega often slept with him, curling up next to him on the dog bed or basking right next to him in the sun. It was very cute watching Money take care of a puppy 10 times smaller than him.

teaching the lil guy

cozying up with lil guy

As soon as we knew he was dying, we began making his last days as comfortable as possible. We got him wet dog food, with flavors from “around the world” (a.k.a. as many canned food varieties as we can find from the aisles of Petco), plenty of toys to gnaw on (Money was more obsessed with toys than anyone, always adopting a single comfort toy to bring everywhere; in his final weeks, he was attached to a red flower toy which he couldn't destroy), and a soft red blanket which we tucked him into every night to keep him warm.

It is so hard to make sense of mourning someone before they've passed.

Do I cry for Money, who is right in front of me wagging his tail, asking to play fetch? As we dug Money’s grave in the backyard a few days after learning his diagnosis, he lay down next to us, chewing his toy, watching us dig his final resting place. And on the late nights when his breathing grew shallow, and his ears turned cold, and his eyes kept rolling back, I prayed for these to not be his final breaths, but I also wanted him to finally rest so his pain can go away.

It is so hard to make sense of that. I never ended up figuring out how to feel, and most often it was just a lingering sadness every time I pet him.

3.

In a really painful way to think about, Money has been here with me long enough to narrate my life. He was there when I played basketball on our old brick driveway and there when we got our basketball court constructed. He watched me live through an NBA dream and ran with me through countless 5am mornings when I was working to get in shape. And when I was injured, he’d walk with me during dawn. He’s seen me in tuxedos, crocs, a graduation gown, basketball jerseys—from NJB in elementary school to senior night.

He was witness not only to my life but also my family’s. He knew my wai po and wai gong well before they moved out to their senior home, was here when nai nai and ye ye flew from China to visit. He was there to watch my brother teach me to lift weights in the garage for the first time, and he was there when we both moved out for college. In some really painful ways right now I realize that he is family, in ways that others will never fully understand; he raised me just as much as I raised him. This thought makes me sob until I shake.

Without words, he kept a record of our lives, held gently in his loyal eyes. Where does all of that go when he dies? You realize that there are very few people you can call family in this sense, and so we hold each other a bit tighter through the loss.

4.

Money teaches me from childhood to now what it is to love deeply: there were never grandiose gestures between us but rather quiet, consistent ones of care. Every time we opened the car door he’d jump up to greet us. And every time we were sad he was there to play fetch. On the nights I couldn’t sleep, he’d find my bedroom window to say hi. During his dying days, we had to sit by him and sometimes hand feed him the wet food, or bring water up to his mouth so he might drink. And I believe that is love.

I also know now that to love someone is to also know them deeply, all of their quirks and tendencies and behaviors. Money had such a distinctly human personality. Here are some things he wouldn’t want us to forget:

• He prefers drinking directly out of the spout.
• He likes to alternate between basking in the sun and chilling in the shade.
• Butt, upper chest, and chin scratches freeze him up all sheepishly.
• "Drop it" meant he’d drop the ball just for it to bounce back into his mouth again. It's a loophole we found too amusing to correct.
• He enjoys rough-housing and pushing him around will rile him up.
• He gets all quiet and guilty if you ever sound upset even if he did nothing wrong. investigating like he wasn't the one who spilled it
• He doesn’t like coming indoors but when he does it’s so funny. He acts so timid. dog in da house
• And boy was he handsome. One of the biggest, strongest dogs I’ve ever met.

He was big, silly, clumsy, good-hearted, soft. He was so damn friendly. We’d joke that there were zero thoughts behind his big cute eyes. If there were any, they’d certainly consist only of his toy, of Momo, and of us.

5.

Sometimes it hits really hard that he’s gone. I watch the security camera footage in bed from his final night. From what I can tell, he couldn’t fall asleep, fighting through to make it until morning, and in my head I think it’s so he could’ve said goodbye to us. I don’t know all the stages of grief, but I knew when I was in the bargaining stage, when I would have done anything just to have him back for fifteen more minutes, to give him a proper goodbye. At one point, I was willing to trade my own life for his, because he’s never done anything wrong; he’s just so good. Other times, I simply feel numb.

Perhaps the hardest part of it all is the finality of death. There is feeling better, there is me trying to write this down to honor him, there is appreciating his life. But, for no better way to put it, there is no more Money. At times when you begin to feel better, you remember that you will never be able feel his head again or scratch his ears, and you feel these pangs in your chest, this deep sadness. I wonder how long I will continue to feel them for or if I even want them to stop.

I hope that Momo doesn’t take losing her best friend too hard, and that Mega, who got less than half a year to grow up with him, remembers him to be a sweet friend.

I honestly have never believed in the afterlife or heaven or any sort of thing before today, and maybe I still don’t generally, but I do believe it for Money, and I imagine him living on. We buried him with his red flower toy so that he can play with it there, and we covered him with that red blanket so that he can continue to stay warm at night. I hope he agrees it’s a pretty spot in the backyard, and that he’ll appreciate having shade in the morning and sun to bask in during the afternoons.

Most of all, I hope he enjoyed his decade here growing up with us.

i love you always

Thank you to Tina Mai  and Vedant Khanna  for reading drafts of this.

#journal entry 5.21.25

Money’s death has been harder on me than I realized. I had written that the hardest part of him passing was the “finality of death,” but I now think this assumes an understanding of that finality.

What has ended up haunting me in the weeks following that day is not understanding where it all goes. Where does he—his personality and his memories and his livelihood and his love—go when he dies? I’ve started to have this recurring fuzzy dream where I keep losing loved ones. I don’t exactly know who, but they all die by disappearing in some way that leaves me painfully confused as to where they went: sometimes they sink into a vast lake, sometimes they merge into their clothing, but every time they just… disappear. One of those dreams, I was left holding their hat, and I was trying to figure out if they were inside the hat. I’m never able to fall back asleep.

I have not been able to understand Money’s death. He watched me and my family grow up, he is in practically every memory I consider nostalgic. When I think of the happy summer days of my childhood, I often think of two vivid scenes:

• A sunny summer afternoon in our driveway, perhaps playing on the trampoline or the basketball court. Yellow flowers, which we did not plant, cover any area that has dirt.
• A very quiet, not too hot, not too sunny day. I’m in the shady patio-ish area in our backyard, covered by grape vines so that the sun only comes through in spots between the leaves.

And in both scenes, Momo and Money are there, whether it be running in the foreground or laying down in the background.

So if Money is gone, then a part of my childhood has died with him.

I absolutely refuse to believe that all that is left of him is in his body in our backyard. And honestly, I’m thinking that’s why I haven’t visited since burying him: maybe I’m scared to look at the patch of dirt and say, “There he is.”

I initially believed in the afterlife, perhaps just to keep him alive somewhere so that he may continue living. But that made me very sad because he’s the first one there in the family he grew up with. There’s no Momo and none of us, and he’s always been a super social dog, so the thought of him being lonely made it hard so I stopped believing that. But then I really don’t know where he is.

And I still get the bargaining phases where I would trade my own life for his, because he seriously is just so good. Everyone loves their dog, and everyone says that the love of a dog is so pure. But I’ve stayed with many dogs for a long time, and Money is the only dog I’ve never seen get jealous or greedy for treats or food. He’s literally just a loving, good dog.

I miss him very much.