big death. small death

Thursday morning Trent came in to wake me and and told me that Alabama was dying. There was vomit and blood and diarrhea all over the yard. We found her unable to get up, lying on the ground, wet with dew. We tried to get her up, to put her in her dog bed, to make her warm and comfortable. Trent asked me to take her picture. And I did for the last time. We had a terrible, disturbing and tearful trip to the vet. There was nothing we could do, and so we waited on the floor with her, sitting the three of us together on a quilt. It was immeadiate and visceral being there for a death. Eventually her lungs stopped, and finally her heart.

This is what happened to me, though my heart was shocked back into beating, my lungs inflated again by a machine. Its mazing how long a heart will beat after the lungs stop.

The next morning I found a glass of wine that had been left out. A moth had died in the glass, its fragile body floating o the surface of red liquid. Also a life.

It is sad to come home, sad to see no face greeting you, sad to hear no clickety-clack on the floor in the mornings. We have one less soul in the house, and that absence is felt.