The cherry on top

For the past couple of days I have been sick, the sort of sick where as you’re choking on the phlegm you barely have the energy to hack up, you wish somebody from the heavens above would have mercy and strike you down with a lightening bolt. To make matters worse it is my children’s spring break. This means that as I flop about coughing and wheezing they are alternately demanding to be entertained or fighting amongst themselves about which on looked at the other. I told them I felt as though I was a bit of roadkill and they were the vultures hopping about my bloating carcass and pecking out my unseeing eyes. This, of course, brought laughter to the older two and questions about roadkill from the youngest. I don’t think they got that I was asking them to back off and have some mercy. The best way I have found to deal with this all has been to rent movies. In the past two days I have watched more movies than I have seen in years. It would all be relaxing if it weren’t for the fact that Devon creeps up to my face as I lie on the bed mindlessly gazing at the TV and demands an hourly refill on his milk.
This afternoon I thought I might be on the road to recovery and was looking forward to a couple of Devon-free hours since my mom planned to take him on a round of errands with her. But as she was putting on her shoes she looked at Angus, the Black Lab mix dog, and noticed he wasn’t breathing quite right. And when she reflected on it she realized he had been a bit quiet all day. I sat with him for a few minutes, felt his pulse, his cold paws and told her one of us needed to take him to the vet. She decided to take him, leaving me to fend for myself with Devon at the height of his hyperness, and took Angus in for an emergency appointment. Three hours later she came home alone. He had died. Our sweet, dim dog had died. Apparently he had a tumor on both his heart and spleen. He had fluid on his heart, thus the labored breathing. My mom was in the process of transferring him to an all night facility where he would have the liquid removed from his heart in the morning and he would come home for a few days to a couple of weeks. We would all have a a chance to say our good-byes. But it was not to be because he went in to cardiac arrest and the vet and my mom decided to put him down.
We are definitely grief sensitive in this house. We like a bit of notice before the final good-bye. An afternoon heart attack is just too damn hard and far too familiar for any of us to handle very well. Angus was a pound puppy who Matt saved from the needle and my parents took in. He was a Black Lab mix whose mixed half was actually Pit Bull. It was a small detail we tried to hide from most people. But he was actually one of the sweetest dogs I have ever encountered. True, he was dumber than a stump but he was kind and loved my children with all his simple heart. We are going to miss him deeply.