Aching to care
on dignity, endings and a little white dog
Alo, dear reader!
I’m back.
It’s been a couple of days.
Have you missed me?
I have too.
I’ve been stuck.
Not stuck with writing, but stuck figuring out what to say.
Things are a bit cold here lately. The heat pump has been broken for weeks.
We’ve been heating the house with our little wood burner in the living room.
In our cold house, I’ve been numb to a lot.
With Nanny now in a home that you generally walk in then roll out feet first, I think I’m blocking a bunch of anticipatory sadness.
People aren’t dying.
Time is just an arsehole.
It’s limited.
And these days, I can see how precious our time together truly is.
My mother in law reminds me of Nanny.
She’s starting to get really old and she lives really far away - for now.
That’s something we’re working on changing.
I hope she’s much closer soon.
I’m noticing more and more how my parents are aging..
They’re getting older.
They love me so much they’ve put up with so much arrogance, rage and just down right flailing on my behalf, that they’ve never given up entirely on me and for that gift, I’m deeply grateful.
I just wish I would have figured this out sooner.
I guess that’s the gift, the sick and twisted gift of being caught between generations.
My own kids are pushing me away.
They’re rejecting both of their parents.
It’s natural, but it hurts.
Now I know how much I had to push and hurt my own folks.
These days, I really appreciate caring for those older than me - my mother in law and likely in the future my parents, while at the same time caring for my children and helping them become adults.
It’s an odd place that I’m in, it’s a kind of holding on and letting go at the same time.
Holding on to who they are and letting go of what they were.
Life lately feels like eating 70% cacao bars at sunset.
It’s bitter sweet, entirely spectacular and all in all, good for the heart.
We have a little white dog. He had lepto about eight years ago. Dr. Bev told us we’d be lucky to keep him alive for five.
i guess we’re really a lot luckier than we think sometimes.
I was going through my drafts here.
One of the posts I wrote nine months ago.
It’s called My dog is dying.
Only, he’s not.
He’s living.
Sure he’s incontinent.
Sure he shits blood on puppy pads and sometimes on the floor every day.
And?
He’s been kept alive by his sheer desire to love my wife.
When we weren’t sure about her, he was with her.
Now that he’s coming to the end, she and my daughter are with him - carrying him outside to poop and cleaning up when he doesn’t make it.
The vet told us as long as he wags his tail and shows interest in being alive, the inconvenience of his incontinence is the only reason to put him down.
Many people, we’re told, most people would likely do this.
But?
One day I’ll likely shit all over the place and be a big inconvenience for the world.
And I won’t accept being put down because of a few bloody little shits.
When it’s time, we’ll know.