Leaning on those who have been here before me

Again I must give credit to the many who have gone through this sort of thing for helping me get through this with as few scars as I am as of yet left with. The wounds are definitely healing and the memories that have been so painful to remember are becoming endearing again.

I realized that we, or at least I, have really been mourning for a long time. With every bit that her conditioned worsened, my heart sunk more and more, despite my trying to ignore what was inevitable. But I will speak more on this when things are a little less delicate.

For now, though, I am reading soothing words. I picked up a book called "Goodbye, Friend" by Gary Kowalski, about helping cope with the passing of an animal friend. The author is a Unitarian minister who has done a marvelous job of collecting thoughts, words, and experiences of people through time and culture in dealing with the prominence of animals in people's hearts and how they dealt with this situation.

Though the overall conversation is good so far, the most powerful part of the book is the collection of rituals and writings in the back. One particular poem (in the book its teeth are taken out, but still powerful) by Rudyard Kipling stands out so strongly for me:

THERE is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie—
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find—it’s your own affair—
But . . . you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!).
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone—wherever it goes—for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ’em, the more do we grieve.
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long—
So why in—Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

Anyone who has called a dog friend can answer that question. Me, now better than before.

Wave upon wave upon wave

I read somewhere that grief comes in waves and I am finding it to be intensely so.

There are extremes where the grief seems so distant that I feel guilty for getting back to my normal routine. And other moments when I wonder for how long it is going to hurt this bad.

Such little things trigger it. I start humming Tiny Dancer and then I am under the sea once again.

But I think the waves are becoming smaller if no less intense and maybe farther apart.

Timing seems to be everything.

Luckily, I have been renting the Joseph Campbell series on Netflix and today he was talking about the people for who he cared so deeply who have passed on. He says that every moment is eternity and so the moments that he shared with them stay with him outside of time. So it isn't about whether they are "here" or not, but that those moments were shared... at least that is the way it makes sense to me.

That is hopefully where I will find my comfort with Meg. Those moments when she was feeling good that she granted us to have with her. Those moments transcend time so they are ours - how we want them - where and whenever we want them.

And I still feel her presence.





There are many of you who have been giving us your sympathy and for that, thank you so much. It is helpful that people have a sense of what this means to us.

Meg is gone now

Yesterday, everything told us that she was no longer there with us.




She is now returned to the earth and to the world. No longer bound by physical form. I realized that I do believe that her energy can now be wherever it needs to be. I can see her between Emily and I in the bed and hear her snort whenever I want to. I can take her everywhere and be with her anytime I want. My memories are a nexus and she still comes when called.





Here is a video from a few months ago before things got worse.






And here is a video from Saturday - her last good day. She was giving out kisses for treats and even gave one to Duncan when I told her to.




And finally, this is my amateur editing of meg doing her infamous wiggle-worm dance. It reminds us of when Snoopy dances from the Peanuts cartoons so...





The videos should work eventually, according to YouTube...


Emily and I are taking the day to get our heads sorted and talk about her and buy a photo album. Yesterday was hard, but I think the hardest part was finding out about the tumor in the first place. It was a culimination of the worst of our fears for her, but now that she is gone... as hard as it is for us... she is free.

Therapy

I am going to write about Meg.

Chances are this is going to be rather depressing, but I know that for me to get through this as best I can, I need to experience and fully realize the pain of the situation.

So here is the story from the beginning:

My wife and I, against our own better judgement decided to adopt a Boston Terrier Emily found on the internet. I don't know why she was looking, but she found her picture and fell in love with her instantly. I told her that we couldn't do it because of the nature of our living situation at the time and our plans, but Meg's (Maggie at the time) picture and my love for dogs knocked my willpower to the floor and began to lick it's face into laughing submission.

We adopted her from a Boston Terrier rescue organization who had taken her from a shelter in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Apparently she was seized after she or her "brother," Pete, had nipped at a kid. The old owners never came back for them so they went to rescue. The rescue organization discovered there that she had an intense case of heartworm which nearly killed her but were able to treat her for it. In December of 2004, we decided to go pick her up and she moved in with us... and two other adults... three cats... and two frogs... and maybe a fish or two at the time.

She had her issues. She had accidents around the house in secret places and had major trust issues. We realized later that she had likely been badly abused before we got her. But eventuallyher bad habits faded and she became less hand shy. But she was always noted by dog people as "a very serious Boston Terrier" for her personality around strangers.

She was great at home, though. She would jump from couch to couch chasing her toys and it took all of three nights of her living with us for her to move from her kennel into our bed to sleep. In hindsight, that may have been a bad move, as it was among the many things that made us so close to her...

Things were going pretty well up until December of 2005 when she began to have seizures. The first one scared me so badly I think I was in tears. To see her lose control like that and to not know what to do made me feel like the weakest human being on the face of the planet.

In time that feeling passed as the odd seizure became more regular and we just held her through the seizures making her as comfortable and safe as possible. Emily and I began to research heavily into the causes of her problems from the beginning. We gave her medication, changed her food, changed her medication, and did screening after screening to find out as much as we could about the cause of her epilepsy. We went to a neurologist at the U's vet clinic and he told us that it could be anything and that we should decide to either give her a CT scan and look for a tumor or to watch to see how her symptoms progressed. He said that if the seizures don't become more severe for 6 months, we should be "in the clear." We decided on the latter believing that if a tumor were there we would not be able to treat it very well anyway. We relied on hope to carry us through...

and it did for about 5 months.


Then the seizures became more frequent. She began having what they call cluster seizures (3 or more in a 24 hour period). Again we had her screened and tested and changed her medications and there was little change for about a month. All the while I tried to convince myself that it was just something stupid and small like a food allergy and once we figured it out, we would be able to tell this amazing little story about how she was allergic to wheat or corn and pat her little head five years from now and chuckle about it.

But that wasn't what fate had written.

Last week she began to stumble. She would shake her hear to make the collar slide better onto her neck and she fell onto her side. She would stand back up right away, but something was obviously different. It happened more often and last Sunday she fell off of the stairs at Emily's parents' place twice. We decided that damn the money we needed to know what was going on and found a low cost CT scan. They were able to do it the day after we called and at a huge fraction of the cost that the U charges.

When we were there, they took Meg into a room to sedate her and as I saw them walk with her away into the sterile offices and stainless steel tables I felt the weight of what we about to find out heavy on my heart. Because Em is a vet tech they let us come back into the trailer to see the CT scan done. As soon as we walked in, they said they were sorry, but they had already found the problem.









I was able to hold back the emotion for a while but as I stood there listening to words instantly forgotten I started thinking about all of the little things she does/did/won't do anymore.

As she woke up from sedation Emily and I sat in the car and cried harder than I have ever cried in my life. I knew there was no one to blame and that things were eventually going to be OK and that she will soon be free from whatever suffering that she had been through in her life and that we gave her the best years of her life and that we should be proud of the time we spent with her and that we were so lucky to have the time we had with her. But none of that was important.


Because she wasn't going to go camping with us at Mt. Rainier or take a potty break at the side of the road around Lake Crescent or walk along the Pacific Coast or go to a dog park in Vancouver.

She wasn't going to lick the baby food off of our first baby's cheeks and sit eagerly at the side of the high chair awaiting falling scraps.


Fuck, this is hard.


And I hate myself when I sometimes think about how much harder this is because we have to watch her get worse.
















But right now she is doing well.

She occasionally stumbles, but we have her on medication to help relieve the pressure in her head and give her more time. Something may even on the off chance help shrink the tumor a bit. She isn't feeling pain from this thing. Her breathing and heartrate are normal. She occasionally gets confused, but is otherwise the same dog we have always loved, just a little more mellow from the medication. She still playfully bites our noses when she is happy and chases her toys around a bit. She rolls onto her back and lets me make fart noises on her belly. She still stretches out in bed taking up far more space than a 20 pound little thing should be allotted and snorts in three short little conteded breaths before she falls asleep.


It's just that she is going to die sooner than later and we can't really do anything about it.

And that is one of... no that is the worst feeling I have ever experienced in my life.



But we look for and hold on to the good moments. Yesterday, when Emily came home she played "wrestle-ies" and pounced around like she hasn't done in months. I think she knows what we are going through and trying to give us a few highs for our lows.

I love her more than I will love most people I meet in this world. She has always been a great little girl, that stinky little dog.

Meg has a brain tumor

...

My deoderant speaks to me

I think Odin agrees with it.

Earlier rather than later

I went to half-price books and as usual, I spent more money on multiple books than I would have had I simply purchased the book I was originally looking for elsewhere. So I ended up with the book for which I had gone there, "Hitchhiker's Guide...," by Douglas Adams (I don't know why I haven't read it yet); The Four Agreements (a book about...hmm... self... something. I friend recommended it and what it says makes sense); A new small format copy of The Prophet by K.B.; and a pocket Guide to Meditation (I find that these little 3x5" books are the ideal format and buy them in that size whenever possible. I think all books should be considered "field guides".

Anyway, when I was there I came across a book which is the "weekly image." Now if you haven't found the humor in it yet, think with the mind of a fourteen year-old boy (or a 29 year-old adolescent, in this case). It was one of those moments where I stood there, crippled by my own joke, trying to capture the photo on my camera. In regard to the author, maybe his book wouldn't have ended up at half-priced books if it would have befit his subject. Perhaps Hugh Geranium or Hugh Juniper. I think you get it by this point...

The music is a chap that I found out about when browsing npr.com a while back. I dig his stuff. Have a listen.

The place requires a bit of a story. Last week, the woman who is the director for the place at which I intern invited me to go to a "design charrette" for the new location of that place. It was a really good experience and I got to meet and work with a lot of cool artists, landscape designers, architects, and all sorts of others. It is the first time that I have gotten to work on a potential project of such grand scale. I will make sure my "boss" knows how much I appreciated it.

And in my current attempts to not say anything without something to say, there is no "other thing." I found myself digging around for something and that just became a rather sad waste of time. So, sorry. Oooh, I just thought of something awesome, so I am going to put it up. It is a photographer's website who does brilliant work. It will be there soon.


P.S.
Okay. I was distracted by something that seemed altogether better than that artist's website, so the link is to that other thing. Enjoy. Maybe next week, photographer person.

It's Monday again

and here are the news:

The images are from the BBC news site. The captions explain it, but they are images taken by kids in Rio who have been given coaching and cameras. I think I already posted about the movie, "Born into Brothels," but it is a documentary with a similar idea.

The music is a guy who reminds me a heck of a lot of Nick Drake, so if you like the late Mr. Drake, you will likely appreciate his music.





This week I went to the dentist and had my face drilled up a bit.
This is the message I got today from my teeth:







And finally, I found the link to this via aaron at s4xton.com. I think it has a high potential of coolness for all cities-big and small. I would like to see someone put together a local one.

Anyway... enojoy and I hope everone has a good week. Until next we meet...

A simple question I still can't answer

Is it possible for someone to make themself a better person?

Just Funny

In case you need something to make you laugh...

maybe it is just something for small ugly dog people...

Univision is my media-hero

Yet another reason to celebrate diversity. Although the reception is horrible, Univision has World Cup!

I watched the second half of Germany v. Costa Rica and laughed as Germany tried a slide tackle and scored an own-goal. Those silly Germans. Despite the screw-up they still won 4-2.

Weeklies

Toothpastefordinner.com is the site from which I pulled that "comic." A friend at work showed it to me and though some of them are kind of "heh heh" and some are kind of "meh," there are a lot of them that made me throw my head back and laugh. They have at least one each day.

I am not really too attached to the musical choice of the week, in fact I just heard about her that day, but she is pretty good for North American, non-Caribbean female jazz. We will see where she goes, but given the right opportunities she could make some pretty good music. It sounds like her soul is in it.

I needed to focus this week a bit more on plants so I headed down to the Arboretum. I am, as I type, uploading all of the images I had taken. I won't apologize for the quality of most of them as they were meant for simple reference, but if you are interested in plants at all, take a peek here. Every time I return there I remember how beautiful and refreshing it is to go there and I wonder why I don't more often. Then I remember that it is in Chanhassen and I have a grand total of about eight minutes of free time. But I intend for that free time to be utilized there in the future.

And Sketchup is simply an awesome program which Google has now purchased and is giving away a trial version for download. I suggest checking it out it you are interested at all in conceptual three dimensional drawing. It is the easiest thing in the world to use - based on intuitive concepts of manipulation of form. At least watch the demo, but I suggest downloading it and trying out all of the tutorials. It is amazing what you can do with it in so little time.

Beautiful news

BBC to broadcast World Cup matches over Internet

Political interlude

...to think that it was all I used to go on about...

Good news for the DFL if they actually endorse them. I sure hope so. There is a massive article on her in the CityPages from last week.

I imagine that a woman and a minority on the same ticket is either going to be a dream ticket or a curse. Either way it will tell us al ittle more about Minnesota as a whole... or a hole.

We shall see.