Before I begin, I want to make a brief explanation about the real names of our three woozles. For whatever reason, when I first began posting comments about them here on dkos, I disguised their names. Ricky the Chihuahua became “Senor Ricardo.” Heidi the Toy Poodle was “Hilde.” And Toby, the Yorki Poo and now our only remaining pup, was “Tobias.”
Last Tuesday, after Mr. C and I brought her body home from the vet’s, I began a diary tribute to Heidi, who would have turned 16 in October. I wrote grief-drenched remembrances of her, from her adorable puppyhood and beautiful young dog years, to the bony, zombie-like creature she was at the end. I wrote of our deep love for her, and how, back in 1997, she saved our sanity after the loss of her 17-year old predecessor, Sunny.
I wrote, too, of our 15-month roller coaster struggle to manage Heidi’s severe congestive heart failure, and I threw in a plot twist about the jolting, unexpected death of Ricky aka Senor Ricardo, just last month. It was a disjointed, rambling piece, the flow interrupted by tears and involuntary gasps, and my inability to put coherent sentences together.
The next day, after 24 hours had passed since we buried Heidi next to Ricky in the far reaches of our property, I re-read the diary and was disgusted by its self-serving, pity-mongering. A few bits of key details had been omitted, not the least of which was that on May 13th, after she experienced a near-death episode, we made Heidi’s Final Appointment at the vet. When she revived in the examination room, we couldn’t go through with it. Instead, we got yet another prescription from the vet and took her home. The new medication worked for 2 months. And then last weekend it stopped working.
My first diary about Heidi didn’t express what I really felt, which was unbelievable rage, directed at myself and at Mr. C. Fired by anger that almost took my breath away, I began to write about our selfishness and spinelessness, and how neither one of us had deserved Heidi’s love. The new diary didn’t spare one corner of our feelings, or acknowledge any of the devotion we lavished on Heidi before her illness was diagnosed, because that love and care hadn’t come at the cost of letting her go. I wrote of our inability to see and accept what her condition had progressed to, and of nights I laid my head next to hers and tearfully begged her to forgive us for our weakness.
All afternoon I toiled away on the diary, and it felt good, verbally flogging myself and Mr. C. White-hot anger and recriminations rolled off my tongue a lot easier than had praising us for loving Heidi so much and so well, and implying that our need for her overshadowed her need to be let go. In my mind, we had failed her miserably.
My pent up anger and guilt extended to the concept of the “Rainbow Bridge”-the whimsical means by which beloved woozles and pooties are magically transported to a heaven of endless cookies and sizzling bacon-a land where they frolic and play happily with their furry chums until the glorious day they’re reunited with their “people” for eternity. “Fuck the fucking Rainbow Bridge,” I wrote, “Heidi and Ricky are in the back yard in two dusty graves, their bodies slowly rotting away in the Arizona heat.”
So pleased was I with the gut-punching new diary, that I began to search my computer files for pictures of Heidi, Ricky, and of Toby, who is two years younger than Heidi, and whose face is still irresistibly cute, but whose eyes have the bluish cast of an old woozle. The first few pictures I found were satisfyingly hurtful, but as I continued on, I felt the familiar lump growing in my throat and the burning sensation in the pit of my stomach. Tears filled my eyes, and I had to look away from the monitor.
As I did, I glanced out the front window. Shouting for Mr. C to grab his phone, I rushed outside. Here’s what we saw, stretching from one horizon to the other, arching high over two small, rock covered graves in the far reaches of the backyard, a meteorological event that lasted only a matter of seconds…
RIP sweet Heidi and Ricky.
Your message was received.
We love you too.
Mom, Dad, & Toby