My Little Man, Chester

Have you ever been punched in the stomach really hard or fallen onto your back and had the 'wind knocked out of you'? That is how I felt yesterday, standing with Twyla and Brad and Chester in the vet's examination room. You know, they apparently don't tell you to sit down. They don't offer you any sort of cushion for the blow that they are about to deliver, not that it would matter or make a difference. It's like a semi truck hitting you as you turn a corner. Let me tell you, I am so sick and tired of the 'C' word. Fuck the 'C' word. It stalks friends and family and just destroys. It tears the walls down that are so carefully constructed so that sorrow rushes in like a tsunami. And when it washes away again, there is an awful lot missing. Things that you can't afford to lose. Chester is my little man. He has really been the only man in my life for the almost eight years of his life. He sleeps more often than not curled tightly against my belly. When I am at home he is at my side or within reach constantly. He has never lied to me, betrayed me or turned his back on me when I made a mistake. He doesn't blame me for his screw-ups or take his problems out on me. And when I cried and cried yesterday in rage, cried as I have not in many years, in shock and sorrow and disbelief as Twyla sat in a numbed daze of unreality, he slobbered all over my face licking the tears away. He is just a little guy but his spirit is so gigantic. He looks like an example of what would happen if a silky terrier and a sasquatch got together. I suppose you could call him one of our first rescues, though it was just us wanting to get Twyla a puppy. I bought him for $250.00 out of the back of a van in the Westmount parking lot. It was like some sort of shady drug deal going down. There were shady characters trying to sell me this seven week old black bundle of fuzz and feces and tar. Brad kept asking "are you sure you really want this puppy?" But there was no way I was going to leave him behind. He was coming home with us, hell or high water. I guess this is the hell part. I have faced so many deaths in the last few years across every species. Some quick, some agonizingly slow. I just go on. But this time, I just can't picture life without Chester. I can't wrap my head around him not being here to yell at the other pups when he feels they are stepping out of line or starting the howling sessions when he thinks I've gone. I can't imagine sending him off into the dark all alone because he is so afraid of the dark and of being alone. I want to find a way to bind him to me, to keep him here. I want to go back two days and change everything. I hate yesterday. I hate it hateithateithateit. I couldn't talk and I couldn't answer the phone after one call from someone who asked why I was upset. I said I'd just come back from the vet and in this grating voice the person goes "Oh, is this about the dog? So you don't want me to come over?" I felt like going " No, I don't want you to ever darken my doorstep again you ignorant moron." Because in that one sentence she dismissed what I was feeling as somehow being irrelevant. As though the fact that he is of another species makes it something to be easily dismissed. Let me give you a piece of advice. When someone loses a companion of another species, don't ever go, not in your own mind, not to someone else and certainly not to the bereaved "It's just a dog or cat or horse or bird". If you are that stupid and cold, go away. And for myself, I can sincerely say stay away. I don't want you in my life if that is the extent of your compassion. I don't want dismissive gestures and flippant remarks of 'Oh, you'll get over it." Would you say that to someone who is losing a friend or family member. No. Well think again. You just did. Because I have to watch one of the best and most precious people I know die now. The fact that this person is not human is irrelevant. He has lymphatic cancer and so he doesn't have long. I am told that with a few thousand dollars I could extend his life up to a year with chemo treatments, but I do not have a few thousand dollars. Believe me, if I had that to spare I would do it just to spend a little while longer with my little man. Just to be able to feel him sleeping next to my head on my pillow with the light on because he had a bad dream. I love him no less than I would an adopted human child. Those of you who have never connected with another species or who were raised with the bizarre and sicko notion that animals have no souls will be thinking that the loss of a four legged child is not the same as losing a human in your life. You are wrong. How do you measure sorrow? How do you compare this love to that love? I was not able to have other children for whatever reasons. So I took in others as my children. To Twyla they are little brothers and sisters as close as...perhaps closer...than a blood/species sibling. And now we have to face the loss of one in a painful and monstrous manner. I can't even do anything until we get the final tests back in seven to ten days. I keep hoping that they will come back and say "We made a mistake...here's an antibiotic. Chester will be around for many more years.' But what they told us actually is there is virtually no hope. We will treat him with steroids which may give him a few more weeks and will still be expensive, but to the tune of hundreds and not thousands. And you can't imagine how much of a shit I feel like because I had to make that decision. I keep asking myself what I can do to fix this. What I might have done differently to change this. But all I feel is pain. And it is agony to know it is nothing like the pain my little man will go through all too soon. To know that if I had a million, million dollars, the result would be the same. I would still be losing my little child, Chester.

I invite you to walk with me along this path. I will keep a journal here of Chester's journey. Maybe if you feel like it, you could send a prayer out to the universe for him. Maybe it is a good thing that he can't know what is coming. That is a small mercy. But I know. I am so sorry, my little Chester.