KODAK
17 May 2004, 01:00
Today I came home, and Kodak was stuck out in the yard. I think his hind quarters gave out, and he couldn’t get back up again. I don’t know how long he was out there, but I carried him back in and brought him food and water.
So far he’s not been able to rise, and he doesn’t understand why. It’s like his mind is still sharp and still alert, trapped in a body that doesn’t work.
I’m really hoping that it’s just him having a bad day, and not someting more serious. It does break my heart though.
It is a sad day when you realize that you are watching a love one slowly die, slowly break down. I almost can’t bear the thought that he knows that parts of him don’t work, and he can’t understand why. At least as humans, we can face our own mortality, our own atrophy and make our rationalizations, we can delude ourselves, we can eventually face and deal with our own deaths because we understand. Kodak doesn’t understand why his legs won’t move. Why he can’t run anymore. Why he can’t come to mama.
He doesn’t understand why sometimes I sit by his side, touch him and cry.
I know its coming. I know that soon, I will be without him. It breaks my heart and where I could rationalize and understand the end of my own life, I can’t seem to do it where he is concerned. I’m kind of clinging to that hope if I care hard enough and hope hard enough and want it badly enough, that he will get a bit better and I can have another day.
His is the first death of someone close to me I’ve ever had to face.
***
It was a really rough night. At about 3 am I called and left a message with my vet saying that I was bringing Kodak in. I broke down again at the vet – can’t really quite pull it together. Now I’m sitting at work trying to maintain. I look like poop, and I haven’t had any sleep. I will thank you all for the good wishes and stuff later,better. Right now I can’t really see straight or think too clearly.
I watch him now, and I remember the last 13 and a half years. Joy we shared. The exasperation he has caused me. The hurt I might have caused him. Sometimes I overly mothered him, the times I probably neglected him. Times when he was my only friend. Things I could have done better by him. The times where I clinged to him. I am truly loved in his eyes, and however I don’t deserved to be loved, I am by this creature. This creature has never done any harm to anyone, he has offered all that he is and all that he has. And all the maudlin description and heartbreaking odes I wallow in, will never show how much this little animal was treasured.
Yesterday, he barely ambled, and today he can’t walk. My head understands that all things must die, that everything is just temporary. My heart doesn’t understand how such a kind and gentle being is suffering, and why I have powerless to do anything. I had hoped if I care hard enough and prayed hard enough and want it badly enough, that he will get a bit better and I can have another day.
I understand he’s had a long, long life. And I hope he’s had a good one. I understand it here, in my head. In my heart, I’m am still trying to make a deal with the devil to save my dog. I would spend an eternity exiled from happiness, if only I could stop his suffering and stop his pain. I am at the brink. I weep and I can’t stop. I am losing my closest family member, and its like slow torture. I wish you all could have been touched by him. He is a mild, quiet, thoughtful animal. He’s quirky and funny and he’s smart. And he loves me, and I can’t help him.
I find myself screaming in my head, wanting to make a deal with God, with nature, with the one who holds the threads of his life. Take my years, take my writing, take whatever I have and what ever I am in exchange for him. There’s is that little nagging thought in the back of my consciousness that I can strike this bargain, and save my dog. Take his hurt away. Take his pain away. I really don’t know how to end this. I don’t know if this is just a bad day for him, or if its the beginning of the end. I only know that I won’t be loved in this world as I was when he loved me.
