To Shep and Buddy - and mom

(I had posted this several months ago, but it was too painful to see 'out there', and I pulled it from the blog.  However, I decided to repost it. I think it's time...)

We have two dogs that we rescued from a shelter, Shep (on the left) and Buddy. We got Shep about 7 years ago, and Buddy about 6 years ago, although the shelter could not tell us their ages when we adopted them.  Shep came to us as a wildly energetic dog; we got Buddy as a companion. Buddy, who had been in the shelter a long time before we came, was very subdued; they thought he was an elderly dog because he just seemed so weary.  We hoped they'd balance each other out.  Over the years and now, Shep has become more timid and clingy and tired and in pain, and Buddy has recovered completely and is the more energetic of the two, and may even be the younger one. He certainly acts like it. They have had a great life, with loads of love and a huge backyard.

The very very sad fact is that we can no longer care for them. I was laid off three years ago. We are selling the house to move into an apartment, where it will be impractical and unfair to care for two large dogs. Next year sometime, we expect another move where pets will be completely impossible.

Thursday we have an appointment with the shelter to bring them in for a 'surrender', (although we may have found a home for Buddy already; we hope...). It is a 'no-kill' shelter, as long as the dogs are assessed by their vet as being "medically adoptable".

And, I believe that Shep will not pass.

At that point, we have the option of taking Shep home, or allowing them to put him to sleep.  We just can't keep him any longer.  We can't keep this decision suspended when he has a medical problem is hanging over him. It's time.

So now, every time I see him, I see his fate. I know the likely day of his impending death.  Thursday. Yes, I try to cuddle and love him as much as possible now... but it feels so awfully sad. And extremely weird. And filled with guilt and regret.

And I think of human life.  What if we literally KNEW the day of our own impending death? How would we live it differently? What if I knew the exact date when my mother would die? What if she knew?

I know the adage about living each day as if we would die tomorrow (or, next week, month). Say what we need to say to those we love. Live fully. I get it, and try to do that.

But still, what if we really knew?

And I look at Shep, and just want to give love and cuddles and say, I'm so sorry, but very soon you won't hurt anymore. And ... in the back of my mind, I think of my mother, and the NOT-knowing-ness. I honestly don't know what to make of it, except to keep loving and showing kindness and being patient with her. That her own life force will eventually end of its own accord, with no interventions to either speed or delay death, and I hope, it will be peaceful. As will be Shep's.

Smoke and ashes

I posted this about a week ago, but found myself terribly uncomfortable to have so much very private history made public. No one responded (except a friend, privately). I have no idea if just no one read it, or if they read it and found it repulsive or terrible uncomfortable.  I un-posted it for a time.  It's now going back up, but I don't know for how long. Courage and honesty is one thing, but this may be another, especially if I don't get any comments.  But, here goes. Uncomfortably, I'll press Publish again. 



Over the last two weeks, anticipating a move from our house, I have been purging my basement of about ten years' worth of material from therapy.  They were awful, awful days, those ten years, of vomiting out loads of pain and grief and anger and anxiety I'd held locked inside.  For a few years now, I've been done with therapy, really really done, and a thousand times better.  It was time to let go of the detritus of my therapy. As I burned the material, I watched the smoke curl upwards, and ashes drift across the grass on this beautiful day.  I tried to catch some of the larger ashes, and they crumbled in my fingers.

Over the years, I have kept my mother mostly in ignorance of the extent of my therapy and pain. Let's just say that she was there when I was absorbing the pain and fear at the beginning, and the few times when I shared tiny pieces of my recovery with her, her response was not what I might have hoped. So I have completed my internal work without her, and I am glad of it. 

And yet...

In recent days my mother talks about feeling her own death is quite close.  Not just what she has said for years, "I want to die".  No, she now says that she feels she WILL die in the next days, perhaps weeks.  And I see her weakness, her utter weariness, her lack of appetite, and I believe it is possible.

As I look back on that bonfire, I have been reflecting on the symbolism of the smoke and ash.  It was so difficult to get to that point, but now it has been consumed so easily. It has disappeared into nothingness. I no longer need to carry all that. And my own mother, her own history, her own hopes and dreams and disappointments, her own behaviors as a mother, her own pain, will soon disappear just as quickly.

I celebrate that I have been able to spend the last five years caring for my mother without being crippled by the past. Being an adult with choices, with power. I have been able to find a way to love her, to be tender and kind. I'm so glad we've had these last five years. I've become whole.

When she does die, I'm sure I'll miss her, to some degree, but I also see her passing as a moment when I pick up the ash and it crumbles in my hands. She has no more power to hurt me. I will burn away any remnants of the grief and I will be left with some of the love that she surely intended to give me, even though she wasn't really able to love as she might have wished.  But me?  I will be free, with my face in the autumn sun, a cooling breeze and dear friends at my side.

Dream of death

Yesterday, Mom called and said she had a disturbing dream, of her own death.

What was interesting to me is that the part that was so very upsetting to her is the fact that, in her dream, they were trying to resuscitate her in spite of her having a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order in her purse.  She kept trying to tell them about her DNR and they didn't believe her. And then she was concerned that her pacemaker would keep her 'alive' against her wishes.

She's really ready to die.  She is weaker each day, napping after breakfast, after lunch, and going early to bed.  She's quite coherent, alert, interactive ... just tired of all this.