LIFE IS TERMINAL

I was out in the pet cemetery digging a grave for Mori, one of our cats. Mori is still with us, but he is in the end stage of kidney failure, and as near as we can tell it’s the end of the end.  Taking a break I looked around. There were headstones for our dogs Lucky, Shadow, Jackson, Murphy, Cooper, Cody, Bud, two neighbor dogs, our cat Sydney, our son’s cat Tanner and a grave for a couple of the unknown feral cats that found their way into our yard while all of the above mentioned dogs were hale and hearty.  That’s a lot of loss.

Nature plays a cruel trick on us by giving dogs a 15-year life span, cats around 20, humans late 70s and turtles 100 years, which means that only the turtle can suffer more losses in its lifetime. (That’s just one of the five major reasons I’m glad I’m not a turtle.)

I’m not in anyway skipping over the pain of losing a human friend or family member. That is in an entirely different category, not necessarily worse, but different. I’m sure those of you who are not animal people don’t understand that last sentence at all, but believe me when I tell you I have just exposed a nasty little secret of us animal folks. 

I was reading an on-line story about the recent suicide of country singer Mindy McCready. She shot herself and the dog of her ex-boyfriend. The first few comments I read said basically the same thing, that she could shoot herself if she wanted, but why did she have to kill the dog. Remember the movie, “War Horse” we saw hundreds of soldiers killed, but just wound that horse and out come the Kleenex.  How about Marley and Me? The whole family could have been kidnapped by radical Muslims, and I would have been more concerned that Marley was left alone. “Timmy’s in the well!” I would have felt more anxious if Lassie were in the well. 

Hopefully others of you out there feel the same way or I may have to admit myself.

There is something about the fact that animals give us everything they have. They count on us for everything they need, and when we can’t give them immortality, only just lessen their suffering, we seem to have let them down just when they needed us the most.

The last of us we can give them is the hardest to give, to make the decision to end their suffering and to begin ours, and to be there at the end and hold them in our arms just like we did all of their lives. Then we will hold them in our hearts the rest of our lives.

Those damn 100 year turtles are starting to look better….