They Will Break Your Heart.

The months within the abyss never clarified the question. Was the sense of abandonment worse than the sense of loss?

Twenty five years later I still can't find the answer. All those many years ago, when I was the new bride with the husband asking for divorce I couldn't answer this question for myself. Would it have been better/easier if I had been grieving over his casket. Widowed, alone, and yet everyone would know my story without me actually having to mutter the words aloud. Sparing me the humiliation that his truth held. I could have had a life again. Someday. Sure, I would have lived in the shadow of our wedded life contracting so fast. Being so fresh and small then wiped away cleanly. The nuptials of a black holed loss. Our life together compressed with so much into so little. A proverb of a marriage story. Just a few sentences; we came, we tied the knot, we died. The End. But, nope. Me, my marriage, this story, had to have mystery. Intrigue. Substantial tabloid worthy dirt to smear with shame, horror, judges and public notices. Mine had to have an arrest. A secret charge for child endangerment. A pregnant teenager. A mother of same said pregnant teenager who called our house aghast at the thought her daughter was capable of complicit consent. 

He had left before. But, he always came back. When he left for good I realized he had only come back as some sense of pity. Imagine that. He pitied me, and I was the one with the clean record. Nothing more than guilt kept him. After a few weeks not even that was enough. That's a slap in the face with a reminder to listen the next time. Listen to what people tell you. Not only to what you want to believe you hear. I hadn't heard him the first time. I hadn't wanted to. 

While you watch other married couples around you treat their spouses far worse than you know you ever treated your ex the truth remains that they never left each other and yours did. Yours did it in everyway to make it feel soo atrocious you lost your own identity in the mire.

All these decades later I am not grateful for the time my ex-husband and I had together. I am still fuming from the way he left. What shit came out of that departure. My dogs and cats, the dozen plus little lives that I have lost within this same time frame, well,  I am still searching my insides for those little pieces they took with them from the weight of their loss. I miss every precious moment of everyday I had with each of them.

Frippie in the poppies. (Poppies seem appropriate, right?)

At a continuing education conference a few years ago. Three of us sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor, all hoping that it didn't have as many germs as we knew it likely did, eating our bagged lunches. I, always the oldest of the group of my vet school classmates, had by this time, owned my own vet clinic for about 17 years. They, they were 10 years younger and about 14 years shy of my ownership anniversary. New to the game, still optimistic in making all of the pieces fit, sat and talked about motherhood, toddlers and juniors of their own, and finding that elusive balance to it all. Me, I ate. I know better than to offer unwanted, pessimistic advice or lessons. They had loads of questions about bookkeeping, scheduling of staff, adequate staff to veterinarian ratios, payrates. Marketing, websites, inventory buying power, and cases that seemed too odd to be real. Their questions required minimal time to answer. They were most inquisitive about our internal slush fund, its use and my unwaivering dedication to treating every patient who crossed our threshold. They asked many questions. The one that I had learned and they had yet to feel first hand was that one lesson that time makes truest. 

"What's the hardest thing you have been through so far in owning your clinic?"

"Heartbreak. The cases can be difficult. The acceptance of life just not being fair. But, the hardest part above all, without question, is the staff. They will break your heart. You won't see it coming. You won't be prepared for it when it happens to you. You will question everything."

Its bereavement in shades of grey. 

Frippie, cold Sunday at home.

The stickiness of this, my own veterinary clinic, is the same glue trap of my existence. There is such great emotional depth here that it is impossible for it to not bleed into every other moment of our lives. It is the same canvas that paints a families portrait. Dysfunctional, adoptive, ugly with infighting at times, yet still all coming together in times of disaster, trauma, and need. We are that bunch. Proud as I am to have them all home for supper, each with children of their own. This clinic, our veterinary hospital, has weathered storms. Tragic deaths. Departures from unforeseen epidemics. Boyfriends, babies, and ambulances. Waves of changing tides, yet still trying to stay the same course. I have to be the one to leave this time. Abandon the web in the hopes it doesn't force exodus to those that remain behind. If I can logically see myself as the common denominator to all of this then maybe the problems solution remains in the crossing out, cancelling of the common thread? Afterall, excision is curative in so many other cases.

Storm, also never sure of much.

"What do you want to do?" My husband sat quietly across from me. Worried about not being there for me as much as saying the wrong thing.

"I just want to be a veterinarian, and still have a little time left for the rest of the life we amassed." Our house, now finally done. The cats and dogs all healthy enough to not leave me counting days, and pills and obsessing over calories in, weight loss out, and the pennies in the 'good day' versus 'bad day' jar to help measure the quality of life scale.  

"What are you most worried about?" He loves to live here. In the doubting-Thomas shoes. The red spiked tail and pitchfork always at the ready in his back pocket. 

"I am always to blame." You cannot feel anything other than this. The imposter friend. The imposter boss. Never truly a part of the group. Never in on the inside scoop. The pulse of the practice. Always aloft in the crows nest looking for a speck of dry land, or, the iceberg. Sure both are there re-plotting their courses to intercept yours. The sweeping line leading to the bullseye dead-center on your radar screen. Game Over. You know you will go down with the ship. They won't save a seat on the lifeboat for you. They never even counted you into the articles. 

I left the conversation with my business partner/spouse/wise old owl that he is, with this. "I understand now why Dr S and Dr L just walked away from their practices. They had no other way out. They hadn't become different people. They just couldn't stay trapped within their own prison any longer." I am not sure he heard me. It wasn't a nugget of information for him anyway.

In the end you will find yourself alone. Life will remind you periodically to get comfortable with this. It will remind you to be at home in your own heart. That people will tell you who they are. It's up to you to listen. They will come, and go, and try to come back again. You might not be the same person the second time around. It's up to them to listen to that person too.

Serfina

Me, well, the animals, the pets I adore, the places I always invested my whole heart within, well, they never broke me. They might have stolen my heart. Sent me into grieving as violently as anything else ever dared to, but they never broke my heart in a text message or email. Humans, they are the glue trap you will chew your own arm off to get away from. They are the ones you have to become at home with indifference over.  There are people who come and go. They don't have a calling card to notify. They have a history of half hearted attempts. Broken wings. Fledglings who keep flying to a different nest, but, never set up a home. Well wishes and bon voyage. What else can you do?

 It has taken me forever to learn this. I am never the person to leave. There are cobwebs on every facet of my existence. I don't know if I am the wiser or the poorer for this. I just know I am still here. Roots, legacy and epitaph intact.

The Sensuous Bean

Bollo's

I go to a particular coffee shop a street away from my apartment. It isn’t perfect. Not the perfect replica of the one I have spent the last 20 years trying to replace, but, it’s good enough. I feel a sense of belonging there. Silly, I know to find a sense of belonging in a $3 cup of coffee delivered to me in a tiny chit of a chat to make room for the other paying customers behind me. But it’s enough. Enough to feel warm within. Enough to call me back to every morning. Enough to find solace within, and comfort around. 

Gillies.

Most days it's just that. A large cup of black coffee; strong, dark, bold, intoxicating. I breathe it in. That first hello. Steam from its surface filling my foggy head with wakeful inspiration for the days needful wanting. 

Today, standing in line, I thought I saw her. She is always near. I can always feel her around me. But she has never appeared to me in human form until today. Today she was working far behind the counter in the small staff area half hidden from the line I waited in. Today she was there, standing back toward me, hair down, filling the monster coffee grinders just out of my view. And just for a second, the briefest of seconds, I saw her. I knew as my heart overrode my heads sensibilities that this was her. Her hair was long, straight, just past the shoulders, as it always was, with the tinge of silver her box color couldn’t confiscate. She was standing tall.  Taller than she had been in the last few years when the weight of the painful burden of her bodies betrayal had permitted her. Today she was 50 again. Time had slipped two and a half decades. Oddly, or poetically, this is the same morning our clocks had been pushed forward an hour. She worked quietly. I could only see a part of her from the back. Just enough to tell my heart that she was still among us. She had decided to hide in a coffee shop. She must have known I would settle upon this one. It’s deep, sensuous allure calling me in. The cry of a baby to its mom. It’s how we just sense the other needs us. 

Sensuous Bean

I know she turned around at some point. I know she did, but there was no face my mind could correct itself into seeing. Just the back of her. When it was her. The rest I don't need, and, so, I let her stay. 

No, I countered. It's not her. She never wore black. And yet between the coffee and the crowd I was content and comforted to just know she's near.

I spent the best part of 12 years sitting here studying.
Bollo's. My corner

Eluding The Arrow. When Life Narrowly Escapes Death. If Only By A Few Days

I have been repeating the following to myself routinely throughout the past days;

"There is nothing more precious than this day...."

I play this on a loop because my breath can't catch my fears for long enough.

Every moment of each recent day has been an egg-shelled goosestep frenzy. A holding of my breath as I cross my fingers and mutter a silent prayer for a reprieve,,, if only for another day. All the while knowing that my luck, and the mercy from above, is on short supply from an endless demand. Fate always wins. The house always calls its players home from rehearsal. I am not fooling anyone, surely not myself. The one who witnesses, awaits, and too often yields that fateful blow. No, surely I will not be provided mercy from deaths ever tightening grip. 

I know this, and yet I, like everyone else, sit here pray-fully begging for another skipped turn. 

Just one more hour, a sunrise, a day, perhaps the upcoming holiday, to be given with my dear boy.

His name is Charleston. He's 13. All grey faced and creaky. Bones jutting from a spine that used to propel him like an antelope. Stiff gaited and slow. He wags a slow paddle when you gleam a big "hello!" and whisper into his silken silvered ears,  "I love you." He is still there. 100% mentally intact. Feeling all of his wants, his impatient protests, and the pull of a cancer that is slowly ingesting him from the inside. He moans and flops, and reminds me to beg harder. Plead more profoundly. And decide where that line is that I always propose to stop at. The veterinarians compass is full of tricks. Tools of the trade to barter with the invisible veil of fate calling him home.

Today was a night of sleepless worry. He did well yesterday. We enjoyed a full day at home, uninterrupted. Last night he paid the price for not sleeping the day away as is his usual when I work 12 hours. He tossed, turned, moaned, whimpered, and panted in small short blows to a chest that has been compressed by fluid from a tumor leaking inside his heart.

He sleeps at the foot of my bed. His dry, violent coughs jolt me out of half slumber to try to assuage the beast that rises and screams within his ribs. It was a night that brought an awakening that we couldn't do this another day. It was just too cruel to hear him pant so fast and furious and still not be able to catch a good breath. 

When my husband awoke we talked about the logistics of putting him to sleep on his bed. In just a few moments he could be at peace. I could give him that. For all the pain it brought to me. I cried to my husband hating this part of my toolbox as much as I do. I truly despise this one last act. It is the most difficult thing I force myself to do. 

Why do I euthanize my own? 

It comes down to them. My beloved pets knowing that they left with me confessing the depth of my gratitude into their ears, their being. That I loved them beyond measure and I wouldn't let anyone else tell them for me at this last moment together. It makes me nauseous. Physically ill. I cannot eat, or drink, or let myself be forgiven for my failure.

I draw imaginary lines to not cross. 

Today it was oxygen and thoracocentesis. I was not going to put him in a caged oxygen chamber, alone. Breathe better my boy, but do it surrounded by stainless steel and a plexiglass door fogged with panting pleas to be freed.

Chest tap. Drain the fluid compressing his lungs and let the air back in. Why when the tumor is just going to replace it? Maybe it will take days, or weeks (fingers crossed), but, it will come back.

Nope we were going to be grateful for our time together and say our goodbyes. 

The cancer is in his heart, his bladder and his spleen. Nasty invasive fucker holed up in the heart. The one place I can't put my surgically gloved finger on and cut out. Tentacled, maniacal, bastard.

The sun came up. The windows filled with light. The puppies made their morning ritual jump up into our bed and kissed our hands. They wag and wiggle and nuzzle into the pillows. It is their subtle "good morning!" cadence. Charlie usually starts to stir after the puppies pop in. A long exaggerated guttery yawn. A shaking of his head and church bell collar charm cockatoo. He then stretches cat-like on the carpet and trots to the bedroom door for his chaperoned walk outside.

This morning, after a full night of fitful moans he did just this.

Walked outside, peed on the holly and trotted for his morning stroll.

He walked into the kitchen, sat on his bed, and ate the steak left over from last nights green-mile dinner.

I smiled a tear-choked nod to my husband and said,

"I'm calling the troops at the clinic and we are trying different meds and a chest tap."

And so goes the line. Nudged to the corner. Redefined in another day.

The words rattle in my subconscious. The pearls passed down from the weathered vets who taught me to live by these words;

"Let no patient die without the benefit of steroids, analgesics, and an appetite stimulant."

That was the recipe for todays reprieve. And a jigger of chest tap muddler.

and to the wise words of my fellow vet friend,, because it is true that we lose our "doctor brain" when it is our own pet, sedate for sleep. We all need it, and, that mercy comes without a guilty hangover.

For those who understand. For those who still grieve with loss. And for those pet parents who have walked down this road before. You are not alone. You gave a soul a life I know they are blessed and grateful to have had. Every dog should be as lucky as Charlie is. He was loved, he remains loved eternally. What more could one ask for?

Parting wisdom; Saying goodbye never gets easier. What does make it survivable is only knowing that there are lives ahead of me to take care of, and a sense of knowing I can add his footsteps to mine on the other side of this. My life is infinitely richer for having shared the last 13 plus with him.

I will miss you Charlie, everyday.