Time stood still

The week passed and the blog lapsed. It isn't that there aren't plenty of things that happened. It isn't that I wasn't present for quite a few of them too, and several may yet find their way here. But the last four days passed in a way just a bit beyond my full attention span, with my heart drawn constantly to worry about my little doggie boy. It has been a miserable week for him post-surgery, and today the worst so far. Our dear golden friend Emma is coming tomorrow to stay for a week and I'd hoped that Hunter would be well on the mend. He isn't. That's okay, it surely isn't the first time we've had a recuperating dog and in a bigger pack than this too.

But something has changed. There was a time when one or the other (or the other or the other) of the Gang of Four faced serious surgeries, several of them emergencies, in what seemed like every other week of Let's Play Build The Wing On the Vet Clinic, Ka Ching Ka Ching. And I was tough and rolled with the punches and wrapped love and support around those companions of mine and had all the strength to pull them through harrowing interventions and through recoveries that in some cases lasted for months. Except for a few times when friends arrived to be of support, I was alone on every trip to the vet clinic in 20 years, alone in making the decisions to cause pain in order to cause healing, or in making the decisions to kill my best friends. I was alone when their heartbeats ceased under my fingertips, and I was the one who loved them fiercely but never flinched.

But that was a different person, and my insides have shaken all week.