Lucie is one of the quirkiest dogs I’ve ever owned. Her biggest quirk? Special treats. I’ve always heard that dogs buried bones, but I never saw it in real life. Every dog I’ve ever had has gratefully taken a special chew, treat, or bone and ran off with it to eat or chew to their heart’s delight. But not Lucie. If you give her a chew bone she will do one of three things with it: Delightfully throw it in…
The way I see it, one of the best ways to cope with the ghosts on my blog is to share the living characters. And of course, that includes Lucie. I’ve barely written anything on the “junior emotional support intern” puppy I got a little over a month before Pascale died. Admittedly, it was a strange time to get a dog. My heart was so shattered by Pascale’s cancer diagnosis. In my adult life I’ve taken on 3 very different…
I have been putting off this post. Every time I think about writing it, I start to crumble again. Throughout all of these losses y’all have read about in the past five years, I’ve always tried to approach them head on. Acknowledge the pain, be honest and open with you. But with Pascale, I haven’t been able to do that. It hurts too much. On Wednesday, April 22nd I said goodbye to Pascale. When the pain came for her, it…
I never thought I’d live in a time when one minute I’d be reviewing the modeling on the number of deaths in Texas, and the next I’d think, I should really mow the grass before it rains. I don’t have to tell you how unsettling this juxtaposition of pandemic and “normal” life is. We’re all living it. The lucky ones, which I still currently am, have kept our jobs and work from home. Our meetings still run, deadlines arrive. We…
Since the world is focused on the coronavirus right now, I thought I’d shed some light on something more uplifting… cancer! Pascale has officially passed the 30 day mark after her diagnosis of osteosarcoma in the base of her skull. While this post doesn’t offer anything in terms of literature or humor (okay, maybe a little humor), I did feel like it’s important to document what I’m trying to do to help her. To refresh, Pascale was diagnosed in early…
Things are a lot better than they were a week ago. In case you missed my stress from anthropomorphizing dog relationships, the short version is I was a mix of delight from adopting my new (adorable!) puppy, Lucie, and stress from Pascale seeming to hate her. In the middle of all of this interpersonal relationship dog drama, they both contracted colds. First Pascale got sick, and my vet thought Lucie simply brought home a bug from the shelter, and then…
As I alluded to, I brought home a puppy last week. The same afternoon the vet confirmed her mass was assuredly cancer, I went straight from sobbing over her in my backyard to going to the closest shelter to look at puppies with a friend. If that chain of events feels illogical, I can assure you that it felt just as strange to me. I feel so, so broken about the short life she’s going to have. The bad days…
I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of “borrowed happiness” lately. When people know something bad is going to happen, like a terminal diagnosis or someone bound to be fired on work, they say they’re on borrowed time. If you can find some joy before pending devastation, is that borrowed too? To borrow is to take with the intention of returning. But I’m not sure if time, or happiness, is something you can ever get back. It’s ours for…