Dear Fudge,

Thank you for eating today’s hot dog. You’ve bought us all twelve more hours until the inevitable. And maybe twelve more after that, if you’ll let me feed you another. This morning, when it took two of us to guide you to the door, and still your legs splayed out four times, I thought we had run out of time. But you revived. Found your footing. Ate the hot dog. The walking, at least, would be simpler if you stayed on the carpet or your bed.

You are old. Eleven. You have dysplasia in front and back. And yet, you will sleep on the hardwood.

Every morning still, you tack down the hall, asking to go to the bathroom at three or five, your bladder still waking you before dawn. The sound rattles down my spine. And yet I will miss it. And the tick of your walking is nothing to the thunder of silence that will be your absence. I will tear a hole in this green earth asking why. Why the thunder? Why the thunder? Why the thunder?

But there is no question I can ask, no song I can sing, no food I can feed you that will reverse this . And the thunder echoes so loudly here. I can barely hear you for the silence.

__________________

As you can see, the computer dudes at Office Depot have gotten the motherfucking Pink Slip virus OFF MY machine. The computer is better. The dog is … not. This has been coming, and Scott and I are looking at things pretty clear eyed. The time will come soon, very soon, when we have to admit that we can be kinder to our pets than to each other. (Those are my mother’s words, by the way). The kids are sad. We’re sad. The dog is…flipping hilarious. Is it OK if I admit he made me laugh out loud twice today?

Like when he took the hot dog. He’d been rejecting things. Dog food’s been off his menu for a week. But he turned down Lunch meat. Plain broth. Everything. And then, I wandered through the room eating MY lunch, and suddenly the dog was scrambling up to standing, and he devoured it and half of another in two giant ‘Jesus, there’s the dog I knew’ gulps. Even though he rejected the hot dogs as beneath him just yesterday. Whatever appeals dude.

Then heading out, he was in a hurry, didn’t want to wait for me to support his legs, and so he kept going faster like maybe speed would fix the sliding. And for reasons I cannot fathom, it worked. And when I got to the door to open it, he looked back at me like, “See, I got this Mom.” But then it failed colossally the next time he tried it, and he looked so damned apologetic.

Anyway, this is my extremely weird and metaphorical thunder for Trifecta.

 

About jesterqueen: Jessie Powell is the Jester Queen. She likes to tell you about her dog, her kids, her fiction, and her blog, but not necessarily in that order.