What was that you said,
"Keep taking a visit to your blog with NO updates.....geesss get off your ass."
I am here, just don't know how to write down my thoughts lately.
WARNING: the following content might cause depression or atleast longing for when we were younger and we weren't bothered by anything except for maybe when was the next party and the chance to get drunk.
It seems like there is always something happening. Some of it good but a lot of it is bad or sad.
People die - Vivian lost her father to a heart attack just before new years.
People are growing old...I have noticed my family - mother, mother and father-in-law (my father is dead 13 years this Feb.) are looking older so that must mean that I am starting to look older. Ok, maybe I am beyond the starting phase.....but I know I am not alone, right ladies - Lora and Kris
-I'm not going down that road alone.But it is not so much my own aging that bothers me...Sarah, my baby, just celebrated her 9th. birthday. We had a party on Sat. with 8 of her friends - 7 girls, one boy. The boy, Riley, being the token male...all the girls have a crush on him. He and Sarah were "going out" until just this past Monday when he started "going out" with her friend Ashley. Going out, what does that mean at 9? I am not ready for this. I thought I had another 3 or 4 years until I had to deal with that, "going out". Is it because she is a girl? I have not had to worry about dating with the boys - Alex is 15 and Ben is 11. Hey, I'm not complaining, believe me. But not having had to deal with this before I have been caught unprepared. She was in tears on Monday over the breakup. I know, she's 9 so it is really not a break up but to her it was the end of the world. How do you make it alright without making it seem silly. Without making her feel that you are not taking her feelings serious. I knew that within moments or even seconds she would have practically forgotten about it but at the time it was the worst thing that had ever happened to her or that will ever happen to her. We're over that now but it just makes me see that she is getting older, not so much the little girl anymore.
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I've been thinking about my friend Vivian lately and about how she is coping with the death of her father. I was there the day my father died. Even though we were not real close it still had a very big affect on me. For months I couldn't sleep without dreaming that I, too, was dying. I would wake up drenched in my own sweat. I would be terrified. I hated going to bed because I knew I would have those dreams. I don't really remember much of the detail of those dreams but I do remember the panic, the dread.
I remember how sad I felt when we drove away from the grave site, knowing that we were leaving him there all alone. I know Kris, he's really not there. But I looked back at the casket, visualizing him lying there, inside that box - alone. We were leaving and not taking him with us, for the first time in my 32 years...and I cried. I remember that being the one and only time I cried over my father's death.
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Today I almost stared death in the face again. My friend Kris called asking me for two favors. One, she needed the number of the local Vet. She couldn't find her phone book, she can never find her phone book. I saw it there once though. The other favor was, depending on what the vet said, she might need my help to get Riley, a big old chocolate lab - definitely one of the family - into her Jeep. Riley has already been diagnosed with a very bad heart. (Last fall the vet said it is very hard to tell how much longer he has.) This along with seizures. But to look at him you would never think he was anything but healthy and happy. He comes at you with his tail waging, his whole body waging...many a time I have been at Kris' doing something on the computer and he has made himself comfortable at my feet, making me feel like I belong there. Riley is 12 year old daughter Kaigh-Anna's best buddy. What time is the right time for your children to say 'good-bye' to a pet that is no longer just a pet? Do they see him suffer? Is this the lasting impression they need to witness? Is it better they say good-bye before or after he is gone? As parents, is that a decision we can make?
We bundle Riley up and carry all 100+ pounds of him out to my van and I know we are both hoping he does not die in my van. By this time he's already had 3 seizures. More than he has had at one time. At the vet's office they are waiting for him. Kris and I carry him into the room and lay him on the floor. His heart is beating so fast the vet cannot count the beats. The seizures keep coming with no let up. How much can this old boy take? How strong is his will to live? The vet gives him a needle to calm him, hoping once he is calm his heart will start to beat properly. She then slowly administers a shot of valium, hoping to further calm him so his heart can get a chance to rest. He stops breathing. He lifted his head, licked his nose and fought to live. He is not giving up. The vet is giving him compressions to start his breathing again. The seconds go by and nothing, no breath. Kris is telling him he has to breath for Kaigh-Anna. She is rubbing his nose, soothing him. The vet is doing her best to keep him alive. Her assistant runs for more medication. After what felt like forever but was in reality probably 1 0r 2 minutes he breaths. We all breath. I don't know if I was holding my breath but I remember giving a sigh and the vet's assistant taping me on the leg and telling me I can breath again. Tears are on Kris' cheeks. Tears are welling up in me. You could feel the relief in the room, we had witnessed a great will to live.
I came home and hugged my own dog, the pain in the ass that he is. And he got two milk bones instead of the usual one.
Later that day I got a phone call from Kaigh-Anna..."thanks Bonnie".
I could say I really didn't do anything. You know how we all get modest and say "ah gee, I didn't do nothing more than I was asked to do. It was really nothing." But I won't say that this time because I am fortunate to have had any part in helping Riley and his family. To do anything less than acknowledge any help I gave would somehow not do Riley's 'fight-to-life' justice. And there is no way I could tell Kaigh-Anna and Matt (Kaigh-Anna's twin brother) that I felt I had done nothing...because that would belittle what Riley went through and to slough it off would imply the day's events were not that important and/or that I wasn't willing to do anything I could to help. And I know that whatever I did meant an awful lot to them.
Hugs...
