Tag Archives: Grief

Goodbye, Mandy – The Post I Didn’t Want to Write

Posted on November 12, 2020 | 2 comments

Basset Hound, Husky Mix

Mandy Out for a Drive!

Grief is a funny thing.  Everyone reacts to it differently, and the same person can have different responses to different situations that cause it.  My grief has given me writer’s block for months.

May 30, 2017

Mandy and Kayla, May 30, 2017

On Sunday, September 8, 2019 around 9:00 p.m. we had to make the difficult decision to have our loving, mischievous, laid back Mandy put to sleep.  I always grieve when any of our dogs die, but Mandy’s death hit harder in some ways because it was unexpected.  She hadn’t been acting or looking sick even that Friday evening when we went to bed.  But when we woke up Saturday morning, she had gotten sick in several spots.  We figured she had gotten hold of something that disagreed with her (remember, she was our scavenger extraordinaire) and went through the dog-with-a-stomach-virus drill – picked up her water, kept her off food for about a half a day and other such things.  We would put the water down periodically, but she wouldn’t drink too much and she showed a total disinterest in any food we put down for her after the half-day.  So we let her rest, hoping the bug would work itself out in the next day.

April 30a, 2017

Mandy and Tyra, Sleeping Together on the Same Bed, April 2017 (?)

Sunday she still was sick, still not interested in food and not at all her normal self.  We decided we would make sure she went to the vet Monday morning, but by Sunday night we weren’t sure we could wait, so Mark and I went to the Emergency Vet Clinic in Montgomery.   Kayla had school the next day, so she stayed home with Darwin.

August 10, 2016

Kayla and Mandy, 1st day of school, 2016

They’ve seen her before (check out the incident of the medicinal sock here) but it took about an hour for them to get us back to a room.  Once we were there, they drew some blood and did an exam and told us to wait.

The last two pictures of Mandy at the vet’s office that night:

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Mandy being Mandy, she didn’t want to wait on the exam table, so I sat on the floor beside her petting her until the vet came back in to talk to us.  The news wasn’t good.  Basically, Mandy’s kidney or liver enzymes were off the charts, which meant she was dying.  There was no treatment; she was just going to get sicker and sicker as time went on.  We could tell she was miserable, so we made the only decision we could.  The vet’s office had a special room where we could stay with Mandy until it was all over with, so Mark and I spent about 20 minutes saying good-bye, and a few more minutes sitting with her while the shots took effect before we said our final good-byes and left.

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So now there’ll be one more pet to greet us at the Rainbow Bridge when our time comes.  Heaven will be a lot more fun with Mandy there.

Have a good morning, everyone.

Nancy

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Posted in dogs, Pets

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Memories of a Sweet Dog

Posted on April 9, 2015 | 1 comment

Hi Everyone!

I can still remember picking Tyra out at the Humane Society.  We had lost our first dog, Shadow, about a year before, and our other dog, Woof, didn’t like being alone, so we decided to see if we could find a second dog so she would have some company.  Woof didn’t like the shelter much; it was too noisy and loud, so we put her back in the car and returned.  (It was February 14, so the weather was not an issue.)  The first run we encountered had two dogs in it, and two placards with their names on them attached to the door.  One of them said “My name is Tyra, and I know how to sit!”  Mark looked at both dogs, said sit, and one of them, a pretty dog with black hair and white, brown and tan markings did.  (She rarely sat on command after that, but the one time in her life it counted, she certainly did!).  We asked the shelter volunteer if we could adopt her, and the attendant said, “I think that’s an excellent idea!”

Adopted Dog, Shelter, Homecoming

Tyra’s Second Day at Home

No matter how hard a kennel or shelter tries, dogs that reside there acquire the very potent “Eau de Dog” scent, so as soon as we got her home, we popped Tyra into a bathtub, and washed her. From then until the day that she died, that dog never put a foot onto the tile portion of a bathroom in any house we resided in. Apparently, we had inadvertently scarred her for life!

Every dog has a unique personality, and Tyra’s outstanding characteristic was her eagerness to please – not in the goofy, sloppy, wonderful way a lab does, as if his whole world revolves around that instant in time his owner asks him to do something , but in her own quiet, determined way.  She had been left at the kennel by her first family because they had a baby and no longer had time for her.   I always had the impression that she was determined that would never happen again.  Of course, she couldn’t know at first that our family has one firm rule about adoptions of any animal, canine or human – once you’re a member of the pack, you’re always a member of the pack – but I suspect she caught on after a while.

She adapted quickly and well, as this picture from that first summer show.

Dog, photograph, sleeping in the s

Tyra in the back yard in Montgomery

Even better, Woof regained the ability to sleep in the sun and be happy even when Mark and I weren’t in the yard.

Dog, Sleeping in the Sun, Old Dog

Woof in the Back Yard When Tyra was There

We didn’t know it at the time we adopted Tyra, but she was not going to be the only new member of our family that year. In mid-November, at long last, the people at the Alabama DHR told us that they had a child they would like us to consider taking in as a foster child, with hopes that we could adopt her eventually. By December 1, 2004, Kayla had come to live with us. Here is a picture of all five us right about then:

Family Photo

Family Photo

We all had new experiences to share that winter, including the dogs experiencing the joys of having a child on the floor with her Dad and a bunch of Lincoln Log train tracks.

Dogs, Child, Play

Train Tracks, Family and Paws

Kayla and Tyra bonded quickly.  It really helped Kayla understand what was going on with her when we could explain to her what happened to Tyra – and it helped Kayla trust us to keep loving her when she saw how we loved Tyra.

Kids, Dogs

Kayla and Big Dog

Sweet Kisses

Sweet Kisses

There are so many things that made her unique – like the fact that even when she was old and blind, she could hear you peel a banana from 50 yards away and arrive instantly to demand her fair share, or that the only time I ever knew her to intentionally go after another person or dog was when she thought one of us was threatened. She did it twice – once when she thought another dog was attacking Woof, and once when Kayla was four and answered the door when the doorbell rang, then screamed because she didn’t recognize the person there. That time, Tyra had four teenage boys treed on the trunk of their car in the few seconds it took Mark to fly from the back yard to the front door himself. I felt sorry for the boys – all they wanted were directions. Both times, there was not a mark on either the dog or the boys when all was said and done but she had made a believer out of all of them!

Her story here came to an end on March 22. We hadn’t really thought we were that close to the end, even though she was 14, but that weekend she simply couldn’t seem to lift herself up off our wooden floor or go down the stairs at all, so I dropped her off at the vet’s that day, afraid of what I would hear.  When the vet called me back, I think I knew what she was going to tell me before she said it.  Tyra’s back had many osteophytes on the spine that had grown to the point that they were impinging on her nerves. Dr. Mitchell explained that Tyra would be in constant, worsening pain from then on, and we made the only decision we could.

I am comforted by the thought that Tyra knew without a doubt that we loved her; Mark, Kayla and I all made it to the vet about 1/2 hour in advance so we could be with her, petting her and telling her how much we loved her, and then it was time.

I also expect that it was only seconds after leaving here that Tyra was with Shadow and Woof –  trying to help Woof explain to Shadow exactly what Mandy looks like.

Sleep well, sweet Tyra Belle.

Nancy

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Posted in Child's Play, dogs, Memories, Pets, working mom

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The E-mail That Never Comes

Posted on May 14, 2012 | 6 comments

Good morning Everyone!

I had a dream Friday night – in it, I wrote a lengthy, newsy letter to my grandfather and then remembered that he had died, so I placed the letter sadly in the trash can, wondering why everyone else around me wasn’t upset.

Grief over the loss of a loved one is an odd thing.  Even when  the death begins to rotate away in time, and you are forced to pay attention to other priorities,   little things suddenly and sharply bring the loss back into focus.

With my grandparents (even though my grandmother was already dead when Grandpa died, I am mourning both of them together; somehow, losing Grandpa meant that I lost Grandma all over again, too), it can be things as small as the smell of the garage when I walk out into it mid-day, seeing a house by the side of the road that reminds of the house they had while I was growing up, or even checking my e-mail and remembering that I won’t have one from Grandpa any more.

Grandpa decided to learn about computers and e-mail in his early 70’s, about 20 years ago.  Although his information superhighway never went much above the speed of 35 miles per hour since the only internet available to him in Casey was dial-up, he steadily chugged along it.

For the last five years or so, he has sent small group e-mails out about once a week letting us know how he and Grandma, or just he, were doing and giving us pieces of hometown news – small, heart-warming things like telling us that the local football team had made it to the state championships or that one of our many cousins in the area had done something noteworthy.  I think he did it partly to stop the onslaught of calls that would ensue to his house if no-one had received an e-mail from him for a while (we all knew that something was wrong if we didn’t hear from him periodically) and partly because he liked sharing the news with us and he liked the computer.

Before that, we would hear from him even more frequently, as he tackled the task of going through old family photographs from the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, scanning them into his computer and then sending them out to us with information about the people in the photograph, and stories the photograph called to mind.

The grief in losing someone never really completely subsides – Mark’s father died in 2001, and every so often I still see someone who strongly reminds me of him, and the grief comes back – but it softens with time, changing from the raw, jagged grief you experience closer to the death to a more rounded, watercolor version.

I miss them both, very much.  And to all of you who read this who just went through Mother’s Day for the first time after the death of their mother, I want you to know that I thought about you a lot yesterday and my heart goes out to you.

Nancy

6 Comments

Posted in Reflection, working mom

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