The Death of a Friend

Zubi is dying. =(
Just like Tekel, when I was in college in Chicago. I remember the night my dad called me to tell me that he was on the way to the vet to put her down. I remember crying so hard, touched with the grief my dad was feeling himself, and overcome that I couldn't even be with her to get one last hug, on last look at her little sad eyes. You see my dachshunds were a gift from my dad to me, for my 9th birthday and for my 13th. Something that we both shared together. We picked them out together. They were ours.
Tekel died... and now Zubi will be put down this week.
Why do people we love have to die? It's awful enough to be alive on this earth, locking in a game of rules and circumstances we can't argue. And to find some small happiness.... in a friend.... and then have it taken away? It's such a deep hurt. A hurt I try not to remember, one that shattered my soul and drove me to question every bit of sanity that governed the rules of the game of life.
Loss..... why is it so enormous? Why does the grave echo so fathomlessly? Such an enternal blackness that reverberates with tears and wishes and longing that will always be in vain, never to be soothed, never to be filled.....
There's no going back, when death beckons and the bridge is crossed from mortality to immortality. No looking back, no farewell hugs, no last look in the eyes of the dear one we leave behind. One minute our life is securely locking with theirs, and the next.... we are floating along in the cold emptiness of a black lake, locked in fate, fate we had no control over ultimately.
I feel it is something that will always haunt me. I never got to say goodbye to Andrea. I never got to say goodbye to my old people in the Valpo Care nursing home. I'll never get to say goodbye to Zubi... wrap him in my arms one last time, kiss his little head, stroke his little paws, and see his faithful little eyes pouring into mine waiting for the sound of my voice.
I have been blessed, to have these deep happinesses in my life...... blessings which leave scars as they are mercilessly scraped from the futile clutch of my own dreams.

At least in heaven, I'll see the ones I loved, in the perfection of beauty as they always should have been...... But do you think that dogs really go to heaven? I wish I knew.

On Saturday, it'll be my 23rd birthday, and that day will hallmark 10 exact years since Zubi came into my life as the very best birthday gift. How cruel that it is on this week that his life flickers and sickens into the abyss of immortality... somewhere I cannot go. =(