Dirty Laundry and Dying Dogs

Why does it feel like everyone's dog is dying? Suddenly our dog, our faithful dog of 12 years has turned a corner, and we are now faced with the too-soon reality that he may need to be put down. Everywhere I turn it seems someone else is telling me about their sick dog. What is this, and why then does everyone who has had a dog die need to tell me in great detail about their dog's untimely (or even timely) deaths? And like other people's children, I could care less about other people's dogs. (This is not entirely true, if anyone I know, and some who I do not know, has a sick child - I certainly care.) Jackie Brown is dying slowly, and we have been told how cruel we would be to let him continue to die this way...but for now, his tail wags at the sound of our voices, and his ears pirk up at the prospect of food, and I'm not ready to say his time has come.

So here he is, lying on the floor next to me, he has settled down from licking the growing tumor on his front right paw as he rests his weary body from a double limp - his back left leg has a torn ACL and his front right is growing to the size of a baseball. He can't go upstairs anymore, so I'm sitting downstairs typing, sharing the space with him, as I wait for the vacation laundry to complete it's cycle.

The sadness I feel for his aged state is accompanied by the lowness I feel about my sister and her family returning once again to Singapore after their summer visit. Like the sound of cicadas signal the approach of summer's final days, with their departure, so goes what few family members I have close to me, and so goes summer.

When I was younger and without dependents, I would cry away sorrow...now I quietly eat through my pain. I tumble into a pint of ice cream or a bag of something salty...or whatever other horrid snack that was meant to be just that: a snack, not a meal's quantity of sustenance.

I can feel the magnetism of the remaining chocolate bars from smores night on the Cape. The kids loved them and we didn't even have a fire pit to toast the marshmallows. Like true kids, when given a table full of graham crackers, Hershey's chocolate bars and a bag of "Jet-Puffed" (they loved jet-puffed) marshmallows, they dug in and had good, raw smore fun. They could care less if their marshmallows were toasted to perfection on a stick or right out of the plastic bag.

Parenting forces you to act selflessly. I am grateful for this. However, sometimes the constant bravery of selfless parenting, backfires with the byproduct of loneliness. So tonight, while my worn out swimmers slumber in their beds, the loneliness I don't allow myself to feel during their waking hours creeps up into my consciousness and it occurs to me that I'm sad. Sad about my sister, sad about our dog, and the approach of the turning of the seasons.