I try hard to be optimistic, and never to be pessimistic because it is so self destructive. I always endeavor to live in the present because there is so little in my past that does not diminish the beauty of my present life, from having to work very hard to enduring abusive relatonships. Yet, the same rhythms, songs and poetries of my past resonate into my present causing a destructive dissonance. I feel as if I am being chased by a being intent on destroying me – and it is I, one and the same, hunter and victim. The name, time and place does not matter. Led Zeppelin said it so well: The song remains the same.
I know what started it, when it began and how. It is too gruesome for this venue so it must be omitted but readers may imagine away. I coped at the time by telling myself it was okay, it did not hurt me, it would have no affect on my life! I was a brave girl then. Yet, strangely, nothing ever went right in my life, and here I am, a widow for the second time by sixty. I feel like someone’s garbage on the side of the road only I am so inconsequential that the garbage man won’t even stop to pick it up. It is to be left to rot in the mouths of maggots and ravens, yes, nature is the ultimate and most efficient garbage man, the one that counts.
Today, it is difficult to watch my last borzoi, Paris, die slowly from primarily a slow, cruel respiratory death. I remembered when he began to show signs of labored breathing two-and-a-half years ago, and the thousands upon thousands of dollars I spent visiting multiple veterinarians searching for a cure, only to watch it worsen over time. Will I be able to say, when he goes, as I did for Opal:
How? Why? Let Thy will be done.
Opal. Oh, that. While I am at it, the eighth anniversary of Opal’s death is on July 6, and I tremble in anticipation….. Is now the time for Paris to join her? Lucky soul! It should perhaps be myself and let My Boy be restored to health. And let him stay here on Earth, not at some stupid “Rainbow Bridge”. I would authorize that if given the choice.
I can either look out my windows and look upon the beauty of nature around me, or look at a mirror and see my own reflection and be reminded of the life that was robbed of me, my own normalcy. I see and feel it everywhere. Then, the one borzoi puppy bitch that brought me the most joy, the bliss I needed to heal was suddenly taken out of my life, leaving me alone forever. Once more, I had to learn to cope all over again but this time with an entirely new pain, different from that of my parents’, yet it added to it, like a cumulative effect from when I was a child and lost my parent’s love and approval. When I lost Opal, I felt it happened again, and ever since again and again, that I am a life lived on a never ending treadmill of the loss of love, or of love always going away. To live my life demands even greater strength of me to go on in the present, to be ever stronger, to be a normal person and have a real life. And as much as I love my borzoi and am touched by their love for me, their deaths take me back to the profound sadness I experienced as a young child growing up in my parent’s home, and relive it. Saying good-bye to them is very difficult for me to do.