Today… I’m Writing About Something Different
I didn’t expect it, but I knew something was wrong. It started slow, and when things start off slow, you tend to not pay attention. It doesn’t dawn on you immediately there’s a problem, instead, it creeps up, like a slow growing weed that eventually wraps itself around an entire plant, almost seeming to have happened overnight.
She turned twelve in June. We’d seen some decline, cataracts, wobbly on her legs and her hearing wasn’t so good, but she always ate. Her nickname (among others) is Miss Piggy and she came by it honestly. She’d lost weight, but so had the other little one. I thought, feed them more, so I did. But it was that extra food that threw the red flag out, the warning signs that had been there were now distress signals.
Her body was overloaded with enzymes and other “things” that couldn’t be processed quickly enough. The extra food triggered it. Her brain said, you have enough, you don’t need it, while in reality it was only confused. The conflict went on unseen, an infestation, a breakdown, a silent war within. Until she showed us by getting sick, her body trying to rid itself of what it thought it didn’t need.
The call was made, the blood work done. In those few hours there was belief, the comforting thought that she’d had something like this before, she’ll be okay. A good dose of antibiotics and some rest will put her back to being good as new. Not so fast. The blood work showed the onset of renal failure. This is not an immediate death sentence, but it holds the sound of a closing door, moving me from one stage into another.
I will do everything I can, everything in my power to help her through and God knows, when I have to let her go, I will do the right thing. My heart is breaking today, the full comprehension that my faithful little companion’s time is truly limited with me is sinking in slowly. Fleeting thoughts of her age and what will come have always been there – but I would chase them away with a session of “go get it!” as if to prove she was still young.
It seems she’s been with me always, yet these twelve years have now rushed up and passed me by. Whatever her time is here, it will never be enough. She will go one day, a journey of her own, a quiet leaving of my arms and my life. I will be there to see her on, with love and compassion, with heartbreak and tears, but I will be there, always for my beloved little Bella.
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