One Day at a Time

Yeah, the vet just sounds cheerful all the time. I don't know if it's a product of youth or something she learned at school or maybe something that only will be defused by many more years of passing on very bad news. She's a great doctor but she lack gravitas - Your! Dog! Is! Going! To! Die! just lacks something comforting. When she told me the cost of treatment was going to run even more than she had estimated and I told her that there as no way I could afford it, she told me that maybe I could start playing the lottery. I laughed but it was a hollow laugh, through my tears.

And then I went back to my desk and went back to work. It's really hard to process tragedy when you are tied to your desk. But I had time to start my official position on it : I'm just going to be grateful for everyday that I have with her. I don't know how long I'm going to have her but I'll be happy every day. I was not going for teary. I was going for stiff upper lip, I was going for brave I was going for keeping calm, keeping it mellow and keeping the tears out of it. I was being a Grown Up. As I said, in my head it sounded really good. In my head I didn't cry at all.

I sat at my desk and I looked up grief support groups for people who have lost pets, I looked up cremation costs, a lot by the way. It costs a fortune to treat my large breed dog and it's going to cost a fortune to cremate her too. Big Dog bigotry, sizism if you will, sucks, its the only approved of "ism" out there. Oddly, the cremation folks seemed to do most of the grief group sponsoring, not vets. I put some thought into calling my people doctor and getting a scrip for some sort of sedative when the time comes because I know I'm not going to handle it at all well. I'm going to need to be drugged.

Hearing it out loud ruined everything. I was standing there going Are you hearing what you are saying? Are you out of your mind? Your dog is going to die and you're being all casual about it but in real life you are really freaking out, you are trying to be all cool, but you just aren't that good of an actor.

I said it to myself a lot. It sounds like I accept whats happening, I know I made the right choice and that I'm in touch with my feelings and I'm embracing reality. In my head it sounded great. I was very proud of myself. And then I tried to say it out loud and I got all teary. A blubbery mess. This isn't what it was supposed to be like.

Remember when we were little and we talked about how cool bring a grown up would be? What a cruel joke. We were lied to. We thought it was all about staying up as late and wearing whatever we wanted... Eating ice cream for dinner!. Being an adult was supposed to be the most fun ever. I'm not having fun yet. No one mentioned the part where you have to weigh your quality of life againts your dogs life.

I guess its for the best. If anyone had told us how really awful being a grown up is none of us would ever grow up. It would be a world of thirty-seven year old third graders and nineteen year olds being carried in snuggies

And all morning I'm immursing myselk in her death...And then I went home for lunch and there she was standing in the doorway, all wiggly and smiling and happy so glad to see me, Alive.