Grief and small joys
Coworker J was probably right in telling me I shouldn't even have been at work yesterday. I sort of needed it to ground my week, but I sure didn't get anything remotely productive accomplished.
I said goodbye to Hobbes in the vet office - he was so good on the way over, hardly a peep, when he usually howls like mad. He clung to me for a nuzzle and a hug. Hobbes always did give good hug, and then I handed him over to the vet. I declined to watch him die - I didn't need that. He'll be cremated and his ashes spread with those of other beloved pets in an apple orchard.
I called my brother as soon as I got in the car, and immediately burst into tears. I hadn't called him earlier yesterday, but he knew. He listened to me sob and said what I needed to hear (which I wouldn't have gotten from my parents; much as I love them, Christian Science platitudes leave something to be desired.) He also called me later that day, after I'd gotten over the first sobbing mess and bouts of crying.
It aches, but it gets better, and I had Laurier snuggling with me while I looked through all the pictures of him and Calvin on my computer. I didn't think I had to many, but my fits of photography usually left me with 3 subjects: my cats. It was so good to see him as he was for most of his life, not quite the snotty, skinny thing the cancer had left him as.
In the surreality of it all, I spent a good deal of time looking at goldendoodle and border collie breeder sites yesterday. Only to take a walk in the park and see not one but two amazingly cute-in-perfect-stages-of-fuzziness border collie puppies. I nearly died of the cute.
And while today has sucked work-wise (imploding laptops and dead hard drives and sucking databases and missing my yoga class), I found my lost sock, sitting on the shuttle waiting for me. (*not*, of course, in the lost and found where I'd called a billion times.) Actually, the sock is a mixed blessing, because now I'm in the middle of a different pair *and* a sweater I'd half-finished and am knitting merrily along on again.
I said goodbye to Hobbes in the vet office - he was so good on the way over, hardly a peep, when he usually howls like mad. He clung to me for a nuzzle and a hug. Hobbes always did give good hug, and then I handed him over to the vet. I declined to watch him die - I didn't need that. He'll be cremated and his ashes spread with those of other beloved pets in an apple orchard.
I called my brother as soon as I got in the car, and immediately burst into tears. I hadn't called him earlier yesterday, but he knew. He listened to me sob and said what I needed to hear (which I wouldn't have gotten from my parents; much as I love them, Christian Science platitudes leave something to be desired.) He also called me later that day, after I'd gotten over the first sobbing mess and bouts of crying.
It aches, but it gets better, and I had Laurier snuggling with me while I looked through all the pictures of him and Calvin on my computer. I didn't think I had to many, but my fits of photography usually left me with 3 subjects: my cats. It was so good to see him as he was for most of his life, not quite the snotty, skinny thing the cancer had left him as.
In the surreality of it all, I spent a good deal of time looking at goldendoodle and border collie breeder sites yesterday. Only to take a walk in the park and see not one but two amazingly cute-in-perfect-stages-of-fuzziness border collie puppies. I nearly died of the cute.
And while today has sucked work-wise (imploding laptops and dead hard drives and sucking databases and missing my yoga class), I found my lost sock, sitting on the shuttle waiting for me. (*not*, of course, in the lost and found where I'd called a billion times.) Actually, the sock is a mixed blessing, because now I'm in the middle of a different pair *and* a sweater I'd half-finished and am knitting merrily along on again.