Monday, July 7, 2014

Pain and Remembrance

I don't know if anyone is still reading this blog or not; I haven't added anything to this blog since a couple of weeks after Sadie died on St. Patrick's Day. I am sorry if you've been holding out and waiting for the past three months for something new from me. Her death had stolen most, if not all, of my motivation to write about pictures I have taken of Greyhounds and their owners. Oh, I do have plenty of pictures to share and give you a little background about them...but writing about it had seemed pointless without her (or Katie, for that matter).

We were without Greyhounds (or dogs) in the house for the first time in twenty years. That span lasted for two months, and it was the worst two months ever.

Fortunately I had planned to join two of my friends on an East Coast roadtrip to see a third friend run in the Boston Marathon for the first time. And I was lucky that I had photo shoots to do with a customer in Williamsburg, NY, and at the Greyhounds in Gettysburg event in late April. It was a great distraction for me, but still I caught myself weeping several times (like on the Amtrak train that we took from Boston to New York, or on the Metro in New York) because I missed her so much. My two traveling companions understood, and helped me a great deal.

And shortly after returning from Gettysburg our daughter and I prepared to drive to Minnesota and back to pick up a seven-month-old female Greyhound puppy (who our daughter named "Bean"), fostered for two months by my friend Aimée and her husband.

I promise to write about how Puppy Bean came to join our family in the very near future.

It was early this evening that Puppy Bean was lying on the front lawn, and I was sitting and watching her while holding the end of her leash. And as I watched I was suddenly reminded of a picture I took of Katie eleven days after her leg amputation. So I took our my smartphone and tried to get a picture of Bean as I had done with Katie.

As I tried to frame the picture it then occurred to me that tomorrow (Tuesday, 8 July) will be a year and a week since Katie's operation. It again saddened me terribly that she was no longer here, and those feelings of loss overcame me anew. I remembered what I told her at the end:

"I'm so sorry, Katie, that we could not save you."


As I have told some of my Greyhound friends who let me vent and hug and cry on their shoulders about Katie since her death, I will forever resent the fact that we did not even get the chance to treat her for the lymphoma that eventually took her so swiftly from us. If we just had the chance...

7 comments:

  1. Don't be sad you lost Katie, be happy you had her for a while and made he life better, as much as you were allowed... there are many greyhounds waiting for this chunk of luck :))

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  2. <3 thanks for sharing, CAN'T WAIT TO MEET BEAN IN SOLVANG!

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  3. We are still here. I still break down on various occasions. It's so hard when you love them so much.

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  4. I know the feeling. When we found out about Blue's osteo, just a year and two weeks ago, it was already too late. There were already stress fractures throughout the bone. She was already sedated for the x-rays, and I just knew I didn't want her to wake up and hurt anymore.

    Flattery makes me laugh or smile every darned day, and I am so happy that she came here to be with us, but I still miss Blue and wish she could be here with us. It's a bittersweet feeling.

    I do know that I have been looking forward to Bean pictures ever since I saw she was coming to your house on Facebook! I'm glad she found her way to you. :)

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  5. Yes, sometimes it is hard to find the motivation to write and post about the dogs. Now that I think about it, I slowed down a lot too after we lost both Jaime and Stella to Osteo. I am very happy to have Kelli and Jenny now, but it still saddens me deeply when I think of my original two girls. Hopefully we'll see lots of pics of Bean on the blog.

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  6. I'm sure Sadie and Katie are happy to know you have Bean to brighten up your days and we're all looking forward to a blog post about her.

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