/Love

 Over the last three weeks my most important person was in a great deal of pain, and it needs to be acknowledged. My dog Shadow was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Before you laugh, and call me a wuss, you have to understand me. As an only child with parents who were working from 7 am or earlier to 5 pm or later I either lived in a daycare with a make-believe family for most of my child-hood or made due on my own. The only constant family member other then my parents, who I admire for working so hard to support me, was a blue heeler who we named Shadow. We got her when i was about 3, and as an infant puppy, she followed be around the kennel, like my very own shadow. She has taught me to be patient, and wasn't too afraid to give me a hit when i pissed her off or was out of line. She taught me to be the calm listener I am today. Today she died. And no matter what you talk to boost your ego and social status that you can face death without flinching- you are all lying bastards. You don't know death, until you give someone you love the comfort of being the last thing they see. You can't understand death until you watch your best friend, your spirit leader, or the sister you've had since before you can remember until you can name the second they died. Eyes don't go glassy. It's not slow. When you say that you watched the surprisingly sudden transition from beautiful brown eyes get a horrifying milky haze in a matter of seconds and you know that life is no longer there, then I think you can say you understand death. I can't describe it. I don't regret giving her the comfort of death through euthanasia. She was starving to death, and was becoming so malnutrition that her stomach had gone hard and was beginning to bulge. On a once large set girl, all you could feel was bones, because of the tumors pressing against her stomach so much that she couldn't even drink water without throwing it back up again. Even if we had forced her to live through that, the cancer was in a position where in a few months she would have suffocated to death if she didn't starve. I can't say I regret giving her the comfort of being the last thing that she saw- but those dead eyes on a face i love so much with haunt me in nightmares.