Caregiving

As for death one gets used to it, even if it's only other people's death you get used to.
-- Enid Bagnold

Monday, December 4, 2000
Two years ago: BESO Me Mucho!
Three years ago: That Rarest Gift

This bunch of entries starts here.

Liralen has been writing almost every day, about her dog Fezzik who is dying. This is from her December 2 entry:

In the forty-five minute ride over, John and I really talked over Fezzik. Talked over letting go of the things we couldn't do, talked over what really was okay in all this. Talked over some of what happens if Fezzik doesn't get any better, talked over a lot of things. This is all so hard. But it's also, oddly, easier than I thought it would be. I mean, if someone had asked me if I wanted to be washing shit off a dog twice a day a couple months ago, I would have recoiled saying, no way. But this is not just any dog, this is my dog of twelve years, the one I promised that I'd take care of from the day we got him until the day he died. So it's oddly easy. Like lifting him wherever he wants to go is oddly easy, as is just watching him and giving him water or food or whatever he gives any indication of needing. Like staying home most evenings to have time with him and take care of him. It's much easier than I think it could have been in the abstract. It's reality. It has to be done. So the choice is very, very easy.

What she's going through reminds me very much of when I was caregiver for my mom! The tough things you have to do, how the situation changes daily, but you do it -- and don't think much about it. How could you not do it?

*     *     *     *     *     *     *    *

I was tired at work, since I'd woken up around four thirty in the morning. I felt a bit of muscle soreness from hauling the raft around. I only had to take my contacts out once, so I guess my eyes weren't in too bad shape. There's a bruise on my thigh, about as big as a paintball bruise, from where I bumped into the stuff in the upstairs "hall" last night. Ouch!

I slept when I got home, from five until seven fortyfive, then worked on journal stuff.