Warning: no real politics, nothing topical in here.
About four hours ago I got a call from my brother, who was nearly in hysterics. Tang, depicted above, had gotten up, started walking across the floor towards him, yelped, fell over, and died. Three years old, healthy (so it seemed) as could be. More significantly: Incredibly intelligent, incredibly affectionate, with more personality than most of the people in the phone book (and probably double the character).
No reason, no explanation, just happened. They were up at my mom's house in northern michigan, spent the day walking around in the woods. Came inside, ate dinner, were hanging around and suddenly it happened.
A bit about Tang: I got her as a puppy. A friend of mine had found her hiding under a dumpster in Detroit, covered in yellow paint. Took her home, got her cleaned up, called me and asked me if I wanted a dog. Immediately she became my good friend, constant companion, and near-constant presence - If I sat at my desk, she'd fall asleep lying across my feet; whenever she could get away with it, she'd sleep lying across my legs as I slept, guarding me from the intruders she seemed to think were always en route, bearing ill intent. Midway through last year, when I got sick and had to be hospitalized for several weeks, my brother took care of her for me and promptly fell in love with her; since then, it'd been shared custody - she'd spend her days riding around in his truck (he's a builder), hanging out on job sites, waiting patiently for him to finish work and take her on another truck ride. I can recount a few dozen cutesy Tangisms that wouldn't mean a damn thing to anyone other than me, but I'll spare you; suffice to say that when she was excited to see you (like when I'd first get home from work) she'd wrinkle up her nose and bare her teeth in a dog variant on a smile, tail wagging furiously.
So I come on here and one of the first things I see is a thread about "why did they shoot the dog," recounting how some sociopathic prick wasted some guy's dog for no reason in Baghdad. I thought immediately of Tang, of how I feel right now anyway, and how sadness would be compounded by sheer, unmitigated hatred and rage had she died as a result of someone's intentional action. And I think of all the bitter ironies in the world: A President gutting social security, a war claiming hundreds of thousands of lives for no apparent reason, tsunamis and starvation and cruelty and despair swathing the world. But no detail evidently too small: fate or chance had to come and claim Tang too...a small, anonymous, inconspicuous creature filled with nothing but enthusiasm and good intent who brought joy to me, my family, and my friends.
I could try to make this "relevant" by going into a treatise about how in a world filled with so much chance-driven sadness, the purposefully-inflicted misery is in a real sense so much more tragic and unnecessary. But I'm not in the mood. This diary's just about Tang, one of the best friends it's possible for a person to have, and about how a small corner of the world is a poorer place without her in it.
RIP, my friend...