Tragic Accident- Where Do I Go From Here? Options

[raccoonkisses]

I don’t even know where to begin – I haven’t been myself going from comatose, to crying, sobbing, back to feeling as though I’m just going through the motions of life. I know now that the “stages of grief” posted on websites are nowhere near linear. I go in and out of the stages, back and forth, back and forth. One moment I think I’m finally accepting my baby is gone, only moments later to break down and sob asking God why he took her from me. At other times, I’m in utter disbelief.

I had no idea the pain of losing my Diva dog, a Pomeranian/Border Collie mix, to a preventable tragic death would gouge my heart so deeply. I have lost several pets over the years to illness and old age. The most painful loss (or so I thought) was my 8 month old cat, Lily who went missing 6 years ago from our home (my sister was taking care of her) while I was out of town. She has never been found. That loss was sometimes hopeful when someone would call with a (false) sighting only to be punctuated with grief – such a roller coaster of emotions. But, now a pain that knows no boundaries has taken hold of me.

Over four years ago a long time family friend was passing through our town on her way to make it to her new home of Victoria, Texas. That very day she had picked up a small, cute as a button dog she had named Diva – a six month old Pomeranian Mix from the Amarillo Shelter. Everybody wanted to hold the puppy that day, a few days before Christmas. Family friends took several pictures with her. I remember having jealous feelings and thinking, “Stop taking pictures with MY dog”. I know that sounds crazy. I mean she wasn’t even mine. Besides, I was a cat person, had two of them, and lived alone. Besides, I have never owned a dog already nearing 40. Well, ok, we did have a dog when I was in the first grade, but I do not have a lot of memories of her. After my parents gave her up, we were strictly a cat family. It took years until my parents revealed that an anonymous neighbor was placing death threats in their mailbox about our barking dog.

Anyway, I told my friend that if she ever didn’t want her anymore or couldn’t take care of her that I’d take her. How rude right? I mean, she had just gotten the dog that day. I don’t know I just felt like she was mine even before she was mine. One year later I got a call asking if I’d take her. Apparently, there were a lot of speeding cars on their rural road and also the dog kept trying to herd the horses. My friend was concerned for her safety. I picked Diva up on Valentine’s Day in 2009 – one of the best days of my life.

Diva became part of the family fast. My father called that night and asked how his “granddaughter” was. Yes, he used those words. My cat-loving father asked how she was – I was thrilled. Diva fell into my routines as she went trail running with me, made trips to Starbucks, took long walks with me, had doggie play dates with friends where we hiked and swam. She even went primitive camping with me for the first time last year (it was a first for both of us). She went to Grandma and Grandpa’s every Thursday to Friday and stayed the night…I was her mother, she was my daughter. We were sisters and yet we were friends. I have no regrets for the four years she lived with me. I told her every day I loved her. I kissed her every morning, every afternoon, every night.

If it hadn’t been for her I wouldn’t have met a single neighbor. I had lived there on my block for a year and knew no one until she came into my life. I’d walk her and she would run up neighbors and say hello by giving them “kisses”. Neighbors would stop watering the their lawn, take a respite in their conversations with one another, stop their smoke break , just stop whatever they were doing just to say hello back to her. She was always there for me. Her heart was big never once becoming jealous even when I married my boyfriend who then moved in, then a new dog, a new cat, and finally her grandpa got a dog (after 60 years!). She was a lover and everyone loved her: neighbors, friends, strangers, and people at the dog park…people always said she was so perfect. She was just that. Absolutely perfect.

My only regret falls on that horrible day – April 23rd, 2013 – three days after my birthday. A routine walk turned tragic. I am to blame for what came next. I had come home. The dogs were unusually hyper. Maggie, my dad’s Chug was staying with us for a few nights with my parents being out of town. My other dog, Tippy (also a Chug) was just as antsy. We had gotten him to be Diva’s companion a year ago. Turns out that Tippy wasn’t Diva’s companion, but she was his.

He LOVED her and wanted always to be close to her. I fed the dogs and was ready to take them on their walk. We got outside and the dogs quickly started off without me. Maggie was leashed but the other two were not. They were used to walking beside me toward the cul-de-sac that led to a trail that then led to an unused overgrown park with lots of room for us to roam. It was a walk that Diva had taken twice a day for four years. I trusted her wholly, not so much her brother, however. I had treats just in case he didn’t obey my commands. She on the other hand, always obeyed me and walked by my side.

You already know where this story is going I’m sure. Yes, I do take responsibility for my naiveté. I wish I had known then what I know now – that dogs, no matter how trained and cooperative, can be impulsive. It was strange, though. She eyed an open fence gate across the street and made a stance like she was going to bolt. That was so out of character for her. I said, “Leave it”. She left it, looked at me and continued walking by my side. A few moments later I heard this UPS truck barreling toward us – he was coming so fast the whole street shook. She started barking as did her brother. I said, “Come”. She didn’t. She took off running up ahead on the sidewalk. Maggie stopped in her tracks. I turned around to see why Maggie had stopped and then turned around to see the back wheels of truck going over something. My heart sank.

I knew it was one of the dogs. Then I turned and saw Tippy still on the sidewalk. The ugly truth revealed itself. Diva had been run over. Maggie still wouldn’t budge so I unhooked her to run to Diva’s side. Tippy ran over, too. He sniffed her then ran off down the street toward home. Diva was gone. Just seconds – yes, seconds ago she was with me. Her spirit had left. I can’t describe it. I mean her very spirit was gone. I was emotionally crushed looking down at my daughter – knees buckling, wailing, “God forgive me. Please God forgive me!”

The UPS driver did a quick U-turn in the cul-de-sac, jumped out and said he was sorry saying that he never saw her. Scary.

I don’t know why I need to know the details that I missed. How did she get from the right hand side- walk to the left hand side of the street? How does a dog lose her life at the end of a cul-de-sac? Yes, at the very end. The images of what I saw (I’ll spare you the details) haunt me. They come into my brain at random times and I must suppress the urge to cry. Nightmares have plagued me nightly.

The next day I went searching for something of hers. I plucked hairs from her bed and placed them in a plastic bag. I even went searching in the backyard for her poop, just to be close to her again. I never found any. I have her collar, although washed, bear stains of her blood. I am comforted and yet repulsed by the sight of it. It is now in a plastic bag in a drawer.

I had one good dream where I was holding her on my lap. She was facing away from me donning the cute spring haircut she had gotten weeks before. She then morphed into my cat, Boo, a cat I had from the age of nine until I was 27. Then another metamorphism – she turned into Bracky, a cat my mother brought home when I was two. She lived with us for 20 years. Those two cats are the only two who have ever come through in dreams. None of the others have – not even Lily.

So where do I go from here? I feel cheated out of time. Diva was one month from her 6th birthday. Yes, I’m responsible for her death and yet this tragedy seems so surreal -it was a walk that we’d taken twice a day for over four years. Incredibly I got a call left on my voice mail from my friend, Diva’s original owner. I say incredible since she has excommunicated herself from our family over politics. I say incredible since he said she was sorry over Diva’s death and that I was a wonderful mommy to Diva. It was her that gave her to me for safe- keeping, safe- keeping from speeding cars. And now, she has another dog that she wants to give me…I have yet to return her call.

Tippy has been depressed sitting in the window, looking for Diva. It has been two weeks and he refuses to play. My husband had to hand feed him the other day so he would eat. He refuses his walks and his treats. I’ve taken him to my parents to play with Maggie, but my parents said he just sits there, too, and stares out the window. He does, however, go for walks at their house. He shakes and stops when a UPS truck rolls by. My heart is breaking for myself and for him. Where do we go from here?

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[Gretta's Mom]

Hello again RacooonKisses,

A few months after Gretta passed, my arms felt so empty. They were full of love with no place to go. I dipped my toe into the rescue site of the organization from which I'd adopted Gretta - and felt like such a heel I cried for days. A few weweks later I went there again and saw Rufus, a 7 year old half black lab - half Newfie. He was only 7 years old and I worried that I would be on a fixed income while he had many years to live (a good thing!) and would I be able to afford it. (AHA moment: When you turn animals into an "it" it always leads to wrong thinking.) But I went back to the site, his eyes bored through the screen right into my heart and I could do nothing else but become his forever mom.

Forever didn't last too long - only 21 short months, but they were the best 21 months of my life. Then last year my younger sister, the dearest person to me on earth, developed Stage 4 cancer and eventually had to have some horrendous (but effective) surgery half a continent away and I went to help her. Rufus has a foster mom he'd lived with for two years while waiting to get adopted. She misses him a lot and whenever I go away, she takes care of him. One morning she called me and said Rufus had thrown up the night before and wasn't eating. She'd taken him to her vet and the vet thought she could feel an abdonminal mass. I had her race Rufus to my onw vet about a hundred miles away. Meanwhile I called him and he told me some very scary news: that palpable abdominal masses were almost always tumors of the spleen and that these tumors were almost always non-solid but were made up ot thousands of newly formed, tangled blood vessels and were inoperable because any opening would make the person/dog.cat bleed out. This wonderful man put Rufus into his own car and drove him 40 miles to our University Vet school Hospital where high-resolution ultrasound confirmed the even worse. The tumor had spread to his heart and it was now bleeding into the sac around the heart, compressing the heart.

Then the call of calls came to me when we were eating supper on the east coast, asking me what I wanted to do. What was there to do? My sister was in more than critical condition and touch-and-go for survival and my dog was dying 1900 miles away. I had to make the decision to stay where I was and for the U of M Vets to give Rufus the pink shot. My babay went home all alone. Nobody to hodl his giant head, nobody to stroke his velvet ears, nobody to tell him what a truly GOOD dog he is, nobody to tell him how much he is loved. Just that tiny bit of guilt brings me to my knees daily. And your burden is thousand of times greater. RaccoonKisses, here are a thousand hugs; no, here is a hug for every hours of your life.

Know that I care for you and am here all day and all night. Know that I will never, ever tire of hearing stories or seeing picture of Diva and Tibby and your other furbabies. Know that I'll take on a little of your pain and so will MoonBeam and many others so that you WILL live. These experiences have changed me in may significant ways. Do you feel like you're living in a twisted version of The Wizard of Oz? Dorothy looking for a home - we looking for the home that WAS right before the accident or tumor. The Tin Man looking for a heart - we looking for a heart that isn't shredded by grief and guilt. The Cowardly Lion looking for brains, we realizing that brains will keep us leading "walking robot" lives until help comes and stop us from doing dangerous things, and then the Wizard turns out to be a big baloon - must be all those people who tell us "It's only a dog" or 'get over it" or "Are you stil obsessing about THAT?" You have to feel sorry for these people because is it so obvious that they have never met sought out by their soul mate animals and never experience the great love between two beings who share pieces of each other's souls.

Please keep exhaling after you inhale and putting one foot in front of the other. And as MoonBeam says, just do what you can. Things that don't get done today can get done tomorrow or wait until it is their turn to get done. I cannot imagine the strength and courage it takes to face a roomful of first graders who have absolutely no ability to comprehend what you've been through and yet you find the strength to say things like "It's a sunny day. Dive would have loved it and been outside playing." My hat and heart is off to you, RaccoonKisses. Always.

Gretta and Rufus's mom