Jean-Luc: February 1994-February 2009

I lost Jean-Luc a little over two weeks ago. My big hearted and vocal fur-child died just hours after I brought him to the vet. I kind of knew it would happen--I knew as I held his body and patted his head, and wondered just why his health deteriorated so quickly from my "bubba" to an emaciated and unresponsive creature within the space of a week.

JL loved for me to rub his fuzzy tummy, and he would put his front paw over his ear while I did so. He was never one to let me hold him, but he loved me without a doubt.

oliver had developed an upper respiratory infection which healed with no trouble, and then JL had it. But no one, especially myself, could predict the outcome with him: perhaps a condition brewed just under the radar with him--the combination was just too much for him to handle. And so I lost Jean-Luc, with nothing left in me this time to console me.

Garibaldi in June, Jean-Luc just seven months later. I am finding it too much to handle, with my fur-kids, like dominoes falling, one at a time, with me hopelessly watching as they leave me. And now there are two. The little one, Delenn, last of those I brought home with me, now 14, and Oliver, at about 6--there is just such resignation in me to be on the verge of giving up, just so I don't need to see any more of them die before me. The pain and grief are terrible, and I just want to not feel this aching anymore.

One of the problems I have is that I love too much, too deeply, and can't just let go, even though I should. I also fear the reality that my mom is as close to death as well, and know I face the reality that she, too, will leave me soon.

I haven't got the religious faith to see me through, and there is a bleakness in front of me that watches as everyone I love and care for topples and dies. I've cried myself out, and I look at a tomorrow rife with sadness and lack of love--where do I go if there is nothing in front of me?

Too much death, too much abandonment, too much fear and sadness. I can only move forward a day at a time. Make no plans for the uncertain days ahead--there is no sense in long-term goals or dreams. I'm reminded every day of my own--and others'--mortality.

I get so tired of life, so very tired. And yet I move on, eyes glazed over, stunned at the devastation and looking for a way around it. But it does no good--we live and we die, and it becomes a race to see if we can outlive it all. I take no joy or consolation in reaching the finish line, because everyone I love is gone before the end of the line.

I have memories of course, but memories can't be physically held, or loved, or cared for, and in that end, there is nothing quite so tenuous to hold fast as a memory, half forgotten and half lost in time.

If there is any justice, my own world will close before I see any more death, feel regret, or know unending pain again.