A Sad Post
Thursday: Young Molly vomited all day yesterday. I took her to the vet. Blood tests were normal, but she still wasn’t okay. I took her back to the vet today. She found lumps, tumors of some sort. She took tissue samples. She says they look “angry, aggressive” under the microscope. She sent off for a cytology report. Meanwhile, Molly hunkers in corners, moving as little as possible. We pet her. We watch, not knowing the degree of her pain.
Friday: I take her back to the vet for some hydration and ointment to put on her ears that should stimulate appetite. No test results yet. The vet says she’s okay with euthanizing her now, considering the poor prognosis. I say wait. Molly hunkers in the corners of rooms, not moving any more than is necessary. She isn’t eating. We pet her and pet her.
Saturday: The hydration helped. She’s perkier, walking around. She nibbles at food.
Sunday: Molly is crying. Not attention-getting cries, but cries of pain. I am a bit frantic, watching her suffer. I call a vet who’s available on weekends. They say bring her in and we’ll euthanize her. I say maybe. Within an hour, Molly has quit crying and is climbing in my lap, curled up beside me, rubbing her nose against my side. What a nice time we had! She climbed all over us, snuggled against my waist, fell asleep on the bed when I took a nap. She climbed on the bed and kneaded Jerry’s stomach while he did his exercises. She nibbled at her food.
Monday: Heard from the vet this morning. The results came in. It’s cancer, in many places in her body. We ate lunch, waited till she came out from under the bed, and took her in. She died in Jerry’s arms, gently eased out first with a sedative and then enough anesthetic to stop her heart. We were both petting her as she lost consciousness.
Jerry, who’s a hospice volunteer, had met this morning with a group of women who are feeling a lot of grief long after their husbands have died. It was either a good time for that meeting or a bad time, or both.
We had Molly only two years. She was a stray. Heaven knows what sort of rough life she’d had, and for how long. But she was sweet, tender, vulnerable somehow. She touched us. I’m grateful that we’re alive enough to hurt.
Tuesday: Emptiness is palpable. All of us, we’re born somehow, mysteriously—we can’t remember—and then we’re gone again. Is there a “where?” I feel Molly as a dispersal. Once she was located in time and space. Including her pain. Now she is a softness in the air, an ease.