i’ve been away.
not really, but it feels like it. i didn’t go to tahoe this weekend because something came up.
cheryl’s dog of many years, rca, had been sick for over a year now. back in april or so the cancer had metastasized and she had to make the hard decision then about what to do. we decided to have rca’s front right leg amputated, which was supposed to give her another couple of months at most. that was over nine months ago! rca was the coolest three-legged dog you’ve ever seen.
but the cancer kept spreading. she was coughing constantly with fluid in her chest, and maybe it had spread to her lungs.
i wish i was a better writer. i could maybe write words that would do this justice. you look at words and paragraphs describing lives and what they mean to people, and you kind of get the sense of it, but it’s just a little summary, right? i see the rich and fun descriptions of xz & danger tramping around africa, and it’s great. but it’s days of travel, hours and hours on a bus, ups and downs all contained into a little anecdote in a paragraph. but within that are all these little nuances. like the smell of the guy in the market as they’re looking for something for lunch. or how hot it is that day and how it’s making beads of sweat collect on the tips of their noses.
i only knew rca for a few years, and didn’t even see her that much anyway, so i can’t even begin to describe all the little things that cheryl must remember. the funny ways that rca would play with her. the look in her face as a horse comes running down the beach. the tired panting sounds, laying on the bed after coming home from a good run. just being there and looking on with comforting, trusting eyes, no matter what just happened.
how can words really describe that experience of those last hours? rca not really being able to do anything but sit upright because laying down on her side made her cough. rca painfully standing up to cough several times an hour, but walking over to the side of the room. like out of politeness. or like she didn’t want us to see. her getting sleepy from all the sedatives fed to her in the orgy of dog foods from nirvana: pats of butter, honey, peanut butter, and bacon, bacon, bacon, everywhere bacon! and yet not really fully getting out of it. being ready to go, because it’s painful not being able to breathe and not being able to sleep for days because you can’t breathe laying down. being frightened and scared because it’s frightening, this moving on to the next thing even though you’ve got people who love you around you and trying to make it as easy as possible.
it’s a powerful and holy thing watching the life leave a body.
i really don’t know what else to say.
Posted at January 19, 2006 12:47 AMshe called me after you left. i’m so glad you could be there with them.
i don’t know what else to say, either.
Jake, the dog that brought Kelly and I together lived with us for several years. Slowly, imperceptibly, his heart failed until one night, he slid to the other side.
It was a brutal time, a time of guilt for us that we didn’t notice, a time of sadness and anger that we never had a chance to say goodbye, that we spent the last day of his life driving to SoCal and then watching a movie; oblivious to his immenent departure. But most of all, overwhelming, earth shattering grief of losing a friend so dear as only a dog can be.
He died in Kelly’s arms, in the back of our old 4Runner as we raced to the canine internal medicine specialists in Ventura. He tried to come into the front seat with me to say goodbye, all I could do as we pushed 80 in an old Toyota was glance into his soft brown eyes and blink away the tears and fears of seeing a best friend about to die.
Indeed, there are no words to capture such a loss…
Posted by: kevmo at January 20, 2006 4:15 PMthere is more howling at the moon to be done.
Posted by: xz at January 25, 2006 11:35 AMComments are now closed for this entry. Thank you for playing.