Maria was ill, belly swollen to make her gait more turtle than canine. The dis-ease was hard to watch, her hairless undercarriage pregnant with some vague pathology, not life; her legs but sticks of sinew and from time to time they would wobble and she would fall the way a horse falls on its hind quarter, head held high, unbelieving, defiant, terrified in the course, the coursing, of life flowing still; and then that disconnect between the course of body and the machinations of mind as if the spirit itself could be wrought and rendered, sundered before tears old as these many days, cold as the fading of light into autumn night.
What do we do she said. We watch, he replied. We watch with all our attention. This is what he said. So they sat, just the two of them as their little dog waggled into the yard, taking a few steps, turning to look back, then taking a few more steps. From time to time she would lift her nose to the wind and her ears would rise. The night was still, cloudless, and from a distance her tawny coat looked silver, almost a mist among the grasses, and with each wobble forth, she grew more ghostlike, a fading waif in the soft dying light, just a smudge; or was it the tears; when she came running back, not ready yet, not knowing she wasn't suppose to still be, as if within her some great battle waged between the heart and the disease, as if within her eyes, if one looked close enough, if one tilled ear toward, all that had ever been fought, was engaged now, under the balding straggle of four point one pounds.
3 comments:
:-(
Even with all that we know, the pain is not soothed one iota. Some of us were brought to our knees lifetimes ago, others yet never heard of knees, many of us in between. As long as blood flows, the pathos of every dulling little coat-hair consumes the watchers holding vigil with nevermore.
Thank you for your thoughts & prayers.
I too, toward you and yours.
Thanks Constance. Maria has what "we think" is the equivalent of "some form" of AIDS, but the vet is not certain. All we really know is her body refuses to process protein as it should and, as a result, although she eats like a horse, the energy seems to pass through her body unabsorbed and so we watch her slowly waste away. She is in no pain and still shows the spirit to live and bark at the doorbell and chase a squirrel, if you call what she does chasing, and she still looks at me with love in her eye, so we stay the course and hope against hope for either a miracle or an easy natural death. We had to "put down" her father for a similar disease when the line of hope was crossed. Even now, I can hardly bare the thought of those images, that morning, the needle and just how quickly it worked, once the vein was found.
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