CH Rachezad’s Elvis Heartthrob, 7/24/1998 – 2/14/2009 "Elvis"
Friday the 13th. It was bad enough that you were diagnosed with severe pneumonia when I found out you couldn’t eat because there was blockage in your tummy. Then, I found out that they would have to take out the blockage via endoscopy or surgery – which turned out to be a clump of my hair stuck to one of the bones you kept on my rug in a later necropsy -- so you could eat, but they couldn’t attempt to put you under anesthesia for either procedure when you were so ill. You were already dehydrated and your belly was empty for at least two days. But, the most serious things, the things that snuffed out the steady flame in my candle of hope was that you couldn’t survive breathing on your own and you finally collapsed on all four legs as the vet was checking on your progress the following afternoon. So, I had to make that very difficult decision.
It was the most difficult thing I had to do – to see you so disoriented, but not enough not to recognize me. I tried to be brave as I looked at your face. I saw the exhaustion and resignation before you had a chance to mask it with your animation. It was as if you were trying to be brave for me, too. You were shaking, like you always do when you were excited. But, this shaking was different. The shaking was your struggle to hold yourself together for me – with your tummy blocked, empty of food, your lungs filled with fluid and your need for more oxygen in the air.
You let me hold you up, but you were too weak to stand on all legs, so you sat your butt down on the observation table while I held the upper part of your body up. The tech was ridiculously trying to follow the movement of your nose with an oxygen mask to keep you breathing comfortably. You let me hold you in the same position as if you were leaning out of the car window, except my arm was the part of door you held onto. Very dignified. Very Elvis. But, you put too much of your weight on my arms. It gave away just how ill you really were.
The vet told me I could take my time to say goodbye to you. I spent just enough time with you to hold you, admonish you for being stubbornly selfless and to thank you for being my very best friend during the hardest decade of my life. I didn’t tell you to be a good boy. I gave you no commands. I simply asked you to remember that I love you and always will.
I didn’t want to be selfish and put off the inevitable so you could keep me company for longer than necessary because I knew you were struggling to put on a good show for me. I felt your words in my mind, “Okay Mommy, I’m done with this place. Let’s go. We got places to be and I want a buggy-ride!” But, the exuberant thoughts you were projecting were very different from the body I was feeling in my arms. The fact that you weren’t squirming around when I held you too closely spoke volumes about your failing health. The fact that I didn’t hear any welcoming “Elvis-snuffles” as I spoke to you gave away your false bravado. It was as if being with me, for me and pleasing me were more important to you than any hurts you felt or anything else in your whole world.
I started to feel like I was being abusive – like how an abused child still loves their parent even after the parent burns the child’s palms with cigarettes or breaks little growing bones. I started to feel like I was that parent and you were that child. The power to be excused of such unnecessary cruelty towards innocence was too overbearing. So, I know it was time.
The rest was blurry at best. Holding you close to my heart, I told the doctor I was ready to see you rest. You didn’t move one bit – another sign that you were in so much pain and were disoriented – when the cold serum entered your weak body. Shortly afterwards, the doctor injected a second serum into your IV catheter. In the span of what seemed 20 seconds, just enough time to tell you one more time of my thanks and my love, the vet asked if she could listen to your heart and then pronounced that you left.
And your spirit took a piece of my heart away and left my soul bleeding.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get over the pain of not having you near to touch, to hug, to love on, to keep me warm. But, if it’s what I have to endure to be able to remember your goodness, gentility, tenderness, and unselfish love with my whole being, I’ll endure it. The decade I had you in my life is well worth the pain I’m feeling now. All these years, I was so afraid of loving again for this very reason of losing. The pain is ominous. The depths of my sorrow are probably equal in measure to the heights of joy you’ve given me. You will always be my hard-headed boy, so stubborn, so haughty. So loving and so loyal to the very end. So Elvis.
I let you go at twilight on Valentine’s Day. I wanted to make sure the sun was setting to signify your life coming to an end on earth. So that on every future Valentine’s Day, I could spend my twilights thinking of just you and watch as the sun leaves me, as you left me. You are my special star, after all. My best boy.