Life Without Maxine
Maxine is gone. My beloved feline companion of 12 years has moved on to that great litterbox in the sky(or at least gotten the hell out of her body). The last 2 months of her life were spent battling kidney failure and what was believed to have been a malignant growth in one of her lungs. In the microcosmic scheme of a cat's life, a long fight. Life rarely draws a perfect straight line between its point A's and point B's, and Maxine's situation definitely had some zig-zagging in there. Despair followed by hope and then more despair. If it were a piece of music, it would've been an ABA form of some kind. Too bad we had to return to that original theme..
In Poker, if you have a lousy hand and it doesn't look like you could improve it, you fold. You get on outa there. Not so easy in life. In life you hang in there, and usually a good deal longer than you should, just waiting for that one card that'll turn your pile o' nothing into a Straight or a Flush. With Maxine, we reached that point and I waited a solid week for that card that I really knew wasn't going to turn up. It just stayed a pile o' nothing. Actually that's how she laid about, mainly on the floor.
So last Wednesday, I had her euthenized. Everyone there at the Animal Hospital I talked to said it was the right thing to do- and they'd seen a lot of us in the past two months! The Vet who performed the procedure was the same one who'd seen her when Maxine first fell ill, and was wonderful to work with just as she was in the first stages of all this. That was the B section in this sad-ass piece of music, the point where there was hope. Well, some hope for awhile.
There was a woman there at the Animal Hospital that afternoon who was having her animal put down as well. Don't know anything about her, whether it was a cat or dog, but could plainly see she was having just as hard a time of it as I was. She was crying her eyes out, and they were offering her tissue paper and consoling her. They offered the tissue paper to me as well, but I was strangely grief-free. Dry-eyed for the moment, and taking care of the business at hand. But I knew it'd hit me at some point in the evening.
Somehow I thought the drive home would be the worst. That's when it would all sink in, the finality of everything, the fact that she's gone and won't be coming back. It was dawning on me, what had just happened, but more as an intellectual realization, with none of the emotional heaviness I'd expected. So with my emotions apparently intact, I stopped off at Walgreen's on the way home, picking up a few items for myself and for my dog- the one quadrapedal survivor- and even a card for the nice folks at the Animal Hospital. If I felt anything, it was relief.
Actually the worst part of it all was walking back into the house. The place is strangely quiet with one less presence in it, and you feel a sharp pain from the void this creates. She's not here anymore. Not even the cadaverous carcass of the ailing animal you half-wished were out of its misery, just thin air. So the torrent of emotion I'd been expecting came upon me while I was putting away the groceries. Life- my life-was moving on without her.
You can get pretty attached to your "critters", and they to you, over the years. They become part of the family, and if you live alone as I do, they become the family itself--or at least your little domestic unit. I mean, you don't anthropomorphize them(or shouldn't at any rate- not too healthy!)- they're still a cat and dog or whatever, but you do imbue them with familial human qualities, like those of a son or daughter. My male dog I frequently call "pal" or "buddy" much as I would a kid, and my late female cat was very much "Daddy's little princess".
Well it's been one evening and three days now. I devoted that whole first evening to just "drinkin' beer and feelin' sad", and unfortunately ran out of beer with plenty of sad left over. So of course it still hurts- at this point more of a dull ache, but still there. A pet of 12 years is a big loss, and I don't expect it to quit hurting for awhile. Life without Maxine sucks. But I guess that's just the price-tag for my life with Maxine, and given all the nice times I've had with her, I suppose it all evens out.
Still sucks though.
In Poker, if you have a lousy hand and it doesn't look like you could improve it, you fold. You get on outa there. Not so easy in life. In life you hang in there, and usually a good deal longer than you should, just waiting for that one card that'll turn your pile o' nothing into a Straight or a Flush. With Maxine, we reached that point and I waited a solid week for that card that I really knew wasn't going to turn up. It just stayed a pile o' nothing. Actually that's how she laid about, mainly on the floor.
So last Wednesday, I had her euthenized. Everyone there at the Animal Hospital I talked to said it was the right thing to do- and they'd seen a lot of us in the past two months! The Vet who performed the procedure was the same one who'd seen her when Maxine first fell ill, and was wonderful to work with just as she was in the first stages of all this. That was the B section in this sad-ass piece of music, the point where there was hope. Well, some hope for awhile.
There was a woman there at the Animal Hospital that afternoon who was having her animal put down as well. Don't know anything about her, whether it was a cat or dog, but could plainly see she was having just as hard a time of it as I was. She was crying her eyes out, and they were offering her tissue paper and consoling her. They offered the tissue paper to me as well, but I was strangely grief-free. Dry-eyed for the moment, and taking care of the business at hand. But I knew it'd hit me at some point in the evening.
Somehow I thought the drive home would be the worst. That's when it would all sink in, the finality of everything, the fact that she's gone and won't be coming back. It was dawning on me, what had just happened, but more as an intellectual realization, with none of the emotional heaviness I'd expected. So with my emotions apparently intact, I stopped off at Walgreen's on the way home, picking up a few items for myself and for my dog- the one quadrapedal survivor- and even a card for the nice folks at the Animal Hospital. If I felt anything, it was relief.
Actually the worst part of it all was walking back into the house. The place is strangely quiet with one less presence in it, and you feel a sharp pain from the void this creates. She's not here anymore. Not even the cadaverous carcass of the ailing animal you half-wished were out of its misery, just thin air. So the torrent of emotion I'd been expecting came upon me while I was putting away the groceries. Life- my life-was moving on without her.
You can get pretty attached to your "critters", and they to you, over the years. They become part of the family, and if you live alone as I do, they become the family itself--or at least your little domestic unit. I mean, you don't anthropomorphize them(or shouldn't at any rate- not too healthy!)- they're still a cat and dog or whatever, but you do imbue them with familial human qualities, like those of a son or daughter. My male dog I frequently call "pal" or "buddy" much as I would a kid, and my late female cat was very much "Daddy's little princess".
Well it's been one evening and three days now. I devoted that whole first evening to just "drinkin' beer and feelin' sad", and unfortunately ran out of beer with plenty of sad left over. So of course it still hurts- at this point more of a dull ache, but still there. A pet of 12 years is a big loss, and I don't expect it to quit hurting for awhile. Life without Maxine sucks. But I guess that's just the price-tag for my life with Maxine, and given all the nice times I've had with her, I suppose it all evens out.
Still sucks though.
posted by Roger U Roundly at 9:25 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home