So, how to kill your soulmate. The person that's been there for you for the past 18 and a half years, pretty much all your remembered childhood, formative teenage years, and those early young adult years. The one individual who loves you unconditionally and no matter how awful you have been to her will still return to you time and time again, waiting for you, loving you. You receive a phone call from your father, telling you that if you're not busy you need to come home. Your Best Friend in the Entire World isn't too well. At All. But don't speed, drive carefully. And you know what this phone call really means, and you drive the half hour home sobbing. And enter the house, sobbing. And hold your soulmate close to you for about 45 minutes, sobbing into her fur for the very last time. And test twice to see if her backlegs will work. Just for you, please, please stand for you. And because your soulmate has always done everything you've asked of her, it's with disbelief that she can't stand, even for you. But she looks just like normal, snuggling up to you. It's just that she can't actually move her body to snuggle up to you herself. And as your father makes that final phone call to the vet, you want to feed her icecream, her favourite treat that she only gets a few times a year. But your brother ate the last of it only 15 minutes ago. Lifting yourself up off that bed from where you are cuddled up with her to carry her into the car is the most difficult thing you've ever done. But you have to. And in the 5 minute trip to the vet, she lifts her head up from your lap to try to look out of the car window, because she loves car trips. At the vet, she sits on your lap as y ou wait in the car (you are not going to wait in a crowded waiting room), her head resting under yours as you sob into her fur as you have done so many times before. You know that this is the last time you'll spend with her in this life, but some little part of you is hoping for a miracle. That she'll be okay, because you just don't know how to live without her. After half an hour, a cheery red-haired vet you've never seen before comes to get you, and takes you straight through to the examining room. And if you thought that carrying her to the car was hard, it wasn't a patch on having to carry her into that room, and put her on the examination table. The vet examines her, explaining that her legs have given way, there's a growth in her belly that is a ruptured tumor on her spleen probably causing internal bleeding. Basically you have only one option, like you knew. No miracle. "Do you want to stay with her?" he asks. Of course I do, she's stayed with me my entire life, it would be like a massive traitorous act not to stay with her till the very last. "I have to let you know what to expect," he says. "Some people don't want to stay because it can be unpleasant." You don't care what to expect, you just know that you have to stay. Your father can't stay, he can't do it. He leaves crying like you've only seen him crying twice before - once at your nan's funeral, once when he had to have killed his own little buddy of 7 years. The vet returns with a big needle filled with green liquid, and an electric shaver. Instruments of death. And shaves a little patch off your best friend's front leg. He fetches the vet nurse, who holds up the shaved skin as he rams that massive needle up her little leg. She lies in your arms, and lets out a whimper. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry it hurts", you say. Your head is on hers, and you watch both her eyes and the level of drugs in the needle as he pushes it into her. "I love you so much, wait for me in heaven" you tell her again and again, waiting for her eyes to close. The vet is finished. You hug her to you for a couple more minutes, waiting for her eyes to close. "Would you like some time with her?" the vet asks. "Is that all?" you ask. Her eyes haven't closed, they're still half-open. You don't think she's dead. "Yes, that's all, she's dead," he replies. "She was dead before I'd even finished injecting her." And you feel betrayed that he hadn't told you this was going to happen, that she didn't hear you last heartfelt whisper of love in her ear. The vet takes you out the back way and you go, leaving her limp body abandoned on the table behind you. And you feel so guilty, like you've failed her, just leaving her there like that. But you just can't stand the thought of her body rotting in the back garden, like the two cats. You throw yourself sobbing into the car, and just cannot believe that she is dead after all this time, that that is the end of it, yet you're sobbing because you know the truth. You bawl your eyes out onto your bed, the bed that was previously 'your bed'. What is even more painfull is that every single time in your life when you've been upset, when your precious fluffy cat died, when you've fought with your parents, had massive disappointments in life, when your friends have let you down, you've cried your tears into her thick black fur. You're dreading going to bed because she sleeps with you every night, and has done as far back as you can remember. Except what you're off travelling or spending the night at a friend's, and even then your last thought is for her, wishing that she was there with you because you always sleep well with her there. This morning, even half an hour ago you had your soulmate, now you don't. You find every single photo you can of her dating from the past 6 years. It's in disbelief that you realise that this is all you have left of the very best thing to happen to you in your entire life. You don't want to stay at home, because she's not there, but you don't want to leave because you can't stand the thought of coming home and her not being there. And you know that when you do leave and return, it'll be like losing her all over again. But it's still with denial that you think of her death. Even as you write this screed outlining the last three hours of her life, and the last hours of your life as you knew it, there's a part of you that thinks she's sitting in her spot on the end of the bed, and if you just turn around and look through the bedroom door you'll see her sitting there. And you sob even harder, because you know it's not the truth. She wasn't your dog, you were her human. And now you just don't know how to continue without her, because there's never been a time when she wasn't there. Don't ring for at least a week Bug, and when you do please, please don't mention this because I just can't stand talking about it. I'm glad I'm now part of this blog though, because it helps telling anonymous people. God I'd love to go back to yesterday, when my only issue was how to keep my head up at work despite gutter peeing. |
I'm sorry for the loss of your best friend. I can't really relate, seeing as I have never had a pet of my own, but any loss of someone so close hurts.