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TODAY
14 April 2024, 10:51
So I woke up this morning. The world didn’t end. Nor did I expect it to. I didn’t “forget” Hurley was gone. I knew the truth. He wouldn’t be sleeping on the couch this morning as I got up to feed my dumb lizard and the others. I don’t know if the others realize he’s permanently gone. I think they just know he’s gone right now. I need to get up and get things done, because the world went on. I dread going out into the world, talking to anyone. I haven’t talked to anyone I didn’t have to except for two or three people and it was agonizing to do that.
I opened the door to let the sunshine in. I lost and found my glasses 4 or 5 times and taking the pills I forgot to take yesterday and brushing the teeth I forgot to yesterday. My mind keeps leaping back to the days that I first got Hurley, replaying that week and those scenes of discovery. I rediscovered a lot of forgotten memories: Stray. I just absentmindedly am replaying happier time, I guess.
Dogs are gathered around me, doing what they do, going through the day. I see Lucy pause at the couch and look. She sniffs and pauses and I wonder what she is thinking. I am looking at old pictures of a happier Hurley and I see what it was to what he had become since about December. He had become a sad dog. He looked at me as if he was beaten. He looked sick and afraid and he did follow me around more. This thing inside him beat him down. This thing inside him was killing him. There were only moments of happiness this dog had these last months. And I sat on the edge of the bathtub filling their water dishes, and I wept. I know I could have done some things better, but I do believe I did what all I could possibly do. Hurley’s body was killing him.
I have a certain empty peace knowing that, in the end, we were there with him and he wasn’t alone. Except for the attending vet calling him the wrong name, the moment was a blur. Brian had the misfortune of actually seeing his face and eyes as the life left him. He’s taking it badly, in a different way than I am, but in some ways, a lot harder. I haven’t figured out how I’m suppose to feel. I had so much anger yesterday and the day before. It was so unfair that his life has to end, just as he was able to really enjoy it. Then there was just the involuntary silent screams I did, I guess in some weird exercise in exorcism. Then there was just sadness I tried to quell so that Hurley’s last moments were happy ones with my voice in his ear.
My face is swollen from crying and I’m still a bit sick from the sinus infection. My hands are shaking a bit, I’m not sure why and I’m puttering around trying to find the ibuprofen and whatever else I need to take. I’m not hungry at all.
I only know now I just miss my dog. I miss the dog I had when I first got him, and I even miss the one he became because of his sickness. I just miss him now. The sadness and pain on his face in pictures from this last month or two now really have a deeper hurt attached to them, as I realize just how much he was suffering and DIDN’T know why all this was happening. Friends have been reaching out and I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, but I just want to crawl in a hole for a while. I know I can’t and I’ll try to talk to everybody. I’m just really sad and I’m desperately trying not to cry anymore, just to give my face a break.
Trying to prepare my return to the real world, where it all goes on. Doesn’t stop for me. Doesn’t stop for one dog. Doesn’t stop at all. I guess that’s a good thing?
