Death. It is unavoidable.. Un-avoidable!. In my veterinary day to day practice I see death most often creeping in like an insidious pestilence. The end,, that precipice place right before life meets forever absent, well that place, where I am mired now, that place sucks,, bad.
Your life and the way you see it, the lens you see everything through, changes. It has too, you have to filter out the clutter, minimize the distractions, focus on the living left to do. Life here at the transition out of it is like a vacuum, a quiet, lonely, absent, dark void.
I was one of those overprotective, hovering, helicopter moms. I have a beagle after all. You let those beagles out of your sight and off they go, into the clear blue yonder, nose to the ground, running, ears flapping in the wind their heels kick up. Beagles live on short leashes, or in kennels, or anchored to a pack and a leader. They make bad decisions if left untethered. Truth is they don 't know any better. It's genetics screaming at their primitive primal brain imprisoned by a nose that must follow where the trail lies, the bunnies are, and the adventure is certainly awaiting. They can't help it. They are a body enslaved to a nose they cannot turn off, nor ignore. I am that mom to a kid possessed, called, beckoned, reckoned to be elsewhere (except when the dinner bell rings or it is raining...beagles are bog avoiding babies in the rain). I am also the mom who keeps tabs,, makes sure they know where their kids are at all times.. I should say, was, I was that mom.
Now I am a mom with a kid on a short timetable. Weeks, maybe months, but damned unlikely to be a enough months to amount to a year. Life changes when the calendar gets to pages, single digits, pieces of a lunar fluctuation, or, "this might be the last time we get to..." thoughts. My wishes for him have changed, come full circle. I want him to run, play, be the boy his beagleness calls him to be. We go for long walks, unleashed, unmonitored. He gets lost in being the boy with the nose in the dirt. We live without consequences in the wild. To die on the trail, possessed and unfettered by a disease that is eating him up from the inside, and backside out. If he passes while doing what he loves, being who he has always been, kicking up the scent he is intoxicated by, tracking his shadows and howling for their surrender I will be at rest with the unfair, unjust hand he was dealt. We all want our pets to die peacefully, in their sleep, oblivious to pain, in their beds at home. Me, for my hellion child, I want it to be living the life he was most fulfilled by. Running in the woods, being caught up in the moment and living the life of the boy he has always been, unleashed, undying, and blissfully euphorically purposeful.
P.S. I have to post this after Jekyll's passing. It was not completed in time to see his paw prints on my doorstep any longer.
I can tell you all that he got to be the beagle he was up until his last moments with us. He was loved, on his rolling hills of lush green and endless possibilities always calling him yonder.
Your life and the way you see it, the lens you see everything through, changes. It has too, you have to filter out the clutter, minimize the distractions, focus on the living left to do. Life here at the transition out of it is like a vacuum, a quiet, lonely, absent, dark void.
I was one of those overprotective, hovering, helicopter moms. I have a beagle after all. You let those beagles out of your sight and off they go, into the clear blue yonder, nose to the ground, running, ears flapping in the wind their heels kick up. Beagles live on short leashes, or in kennels, or anchored to a pack and a leader. They make bad decisions if left untethered. Truth is they don 't know any better. It's genetics screaming at their primitive primal brain imprisoned by a nose that must follow where the trail lies, the bunnies are, and the adventure is certainly awaiting. They can't help it. They are a body enslaved to a nose they cannot turn off, nor ignore. I am that mom to a kid possessed, called, beckoned, reckoned to be elsewhere (except when the dinner bell rings or it is raining...beagles are bog avoiding babies in the rain). I am also the mom who keeps tabs,, makes sure they know where their kids are at all times.. I should say, was, I was that mom.
Now I am a mom with a kid on a short timetable. Weeks, maybe months, but damned unlikely to be a enough months to amount to a year. Life changes when the calendar gets to pages, single digits, pieces of a lunar fluctuation, or, "this might be the last time we get to..." thoughts. My wishes for him have changed, come full circle. I want him to run, play, be the boy his beagleness calls him to be. We go for long walks, unleashed, unmonitored. He gets lost in being the boy with the nose in the dirt. We live without consequences in the wild. To die on the trail, possessed and unfettered by a disease that is eating him up from the inside, and backside out. If he passes while doing what he loves, being who he has always been, kicking up the scent he is intoxicated by, tracking his shadows and howling for their surrender I will be at rest with the unfair, unjust hand he was dealt. We all want our pets to die peacefully, in their sleep, oblivious to pain, in their beds at home. Me, for my hellion child, I want it to be living the life he was most fulfilled by. Running in the woods, being caught up in the moment and living the life of the boy he has always been, unleashed, undying, and blissfully euphorically purposeful.
P.S. I have to post this after Jekyll's passing. It was not completed in time to see his paw prints on my doorstep any longer.
I can tell you all that he got to be the beagle he was up until his last moments with us. He was loved, on his rolling hills of lush green and endless possibilities always calling him yonder.
P.S. Jekyll passed away August 26, 2018. I miss him everyday. I honestly didn't know how I would, or could go on.... but I did.. and I'm still grateful for everyday together.
For more on Jekyll, his disease, my struggle to get through it, and what the other side looks like, please follow this blog. Or you can find me answering questions for free on Pawbly.com, or, sharing cases, and living life helping other companions at my Jarrettsville Vet Facebook page, or on my YouTube channel.
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