Redd
This morning our foster boy crossed The Bridge. Redd has been with us for a little over a year. He came with severe heart murmur, dementia, cataracts, hearing that was fading day by day, and Avascular Necrosis of the ears. His heart got worse and worse with passing time as did his mind, eyes and hearing but his ears cleared up and stopped dying - he stopped getting the black spots that would eat away at the ears.
A few weeks ago he started having sinking spells - he would be walking along and suddenly just melt to the floor as if his bones had gone all soft and couldn't support him. The last few days, he has been doing that repeatedly. So yesterday I made the call to let him go and took him in this morning. When he got up this morning he was acting drunk - staggering, running into the walls and furniture, falling down (not the melting, his legs would just go out from under him). I didn't want him to have a massive heart attack or stroke and suffer so I had decided it seemed the kindest thing to do to let him go now and based on his behavior this morning it was the right call.
Tho we tried, Redd was never able to bond with any of us. He lived to eat, hump, and pee - which he did with abandon. He never interacted with the other babies, unless it was to try to hump one of them and never went over well, and rarely with me unless there was food involved or he *thought* food was involved. He would tolerate a little petting but didn't care to be held - that provided opportunity to hump arms and nibble fingers just in case and that was all. And yet I was hitching and sobbing when we walked in the door at the vet's this morning. I kept thinking I wish I could have gotten to know him before he was so deep inside himself, when he was younger and healthier. I could tell he was a sweet little guy and probably quite intelligent.
He went peacefully and easily for which I was thankful. So now he is free of all his aliments and with the others in the Rainbow Fields.
Fly free, old man, fly free.
"May you know that absence is full of tender presence and that nothing is ever lost or forgotten." John O'Donahue, "Eternal Echoes"
Death is not a changing of worlds as most imagine, as much as the walls of this world infinitely expanding.