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If you are new here, you may have missed my post about furbabies, (see “The Furbaby Cure” http://infertilityrocks.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/the-furbaby-cure/) a few weeks ago. In it I mentioned that my own furbaby, Charlie, was hit by a car on Dec. 30th, miraculously survived and had orthopedic surgery on his leg a few days later.
Yesterday was a big day for us, we got to take off his leg bandage for the first time since the accident. (It had only been changed by the vets previously). So last night, my hubby and I held Charlie down and started unraveling this maze of a bandage on his leg. I made the SERIOUS mistake to take short whiff of the top layer bandage and about passed out. I’m really not sure what was going through my mind at that time, sort of like when you sniff outdated milk even though you know it’s clearly sour, but it was DEE-sgustingnone the less. So, we revealed the hidden treasure, Charlie’s ‘golden leg’, and were quite disgusted at both the stench (and it’s just form dead skin, the incision healed fine), the shriveled nature of it, and Charlie’s incessant drive to lick the leg raw. Ugh, I hardly slept for trying to get this dog to stop licking. We tried to fashion a sock and loose hair scrunchy around it, but he wrestled that thing off in no time.
I’m not sure why I’m telling you all this, as it’s really quite gross. Sorry, it’s on the brain today so it’s in the blog. Now that the bandage is off, he’s not using his leg at all, he’s limping around with it clenched in close to his chest, and it looks just awful . I guess it’s just really weak right now without the support of the wrap, but it gets me really sad to see such a spunky dog like Charlie with this curled up, lame leg. It makes me remember the night he got hit and how fast it all went down before that…normal day, dog scrambling at the door for hubby to come in and then, BOOM, dog gets out and brilliantly heads right for the street.
So, I guess I’m feeling sorry for Charlie, but I’m also sort of feeling a little like the universe is off-kilter today as well. I mean, I know dogs get hit by cars all the time. Bad things happen, people get in car accidents, young people die. I know this, I just don’t let it enter my brain that it could possibly happen to me, of course until it does. Seeing Charlie’s leg makes me feel unsafe, like that could’ve been my son who got hit by a car instead, or some other unspeakable loss.
One of my closest friends had a horrible loss earlier this year when they discovered that her precious 6 year-old son, Evan, died in his sleep. They are still determining the cause of his death and picking up the pieces of their shattered lives. Let me tell you, there are no words to comfort a mother who has just lost her child. None. Witnessing her heartbreak has been one of the most painful experiences of my own life. Witnessing her strength and struggle to keep her head afloat has been nothing less than an honor. And I will admit that the what-if’s crawl into my head at night, and I find myself peeking in on my sleeping son, trying to take control of an uncontrollable universe.
I know some of you reading this are dealing with an unspeakable loss of your own, and I’m so terribly sorry for that. One thing I’ve learned is there’s no logic to loss, it never makes sense no matter how many times you play it out in your head. The pain of losing something so dear is too big for words, is it not? How do you describe soul ache? And the impeding doom after a loss is unbearable…like the earth could just spin off its axis at any moment and go flying into the sun.
I didn’t mean to get so philosophical about little old Charlie. He’s going to hang in there, despite a withered leg. It’s my need to get my world ‘re-tethered’ that is causing this lump in my throat. It’s hard to live in this space of uncertainty, where I know some of you dwell right now. I can visit from time to time, but find myself needing to escape to the frivolity of Jessica Simpson’s ’mom jeans’ if I stay too long. Do you think if I re-wrapped Charlie’s leg that this feeling will just go away? Sigh. I guess not.
With great risk we chance to love and open our hearts to whatever the outcome. That is the way of life I guess, a never-ending possibility that good things can always be snatched away with no warning and no apologies. It is my prayer today, that those of you who’ve lost something precious can live in tethered worlds again. That meaning is made from senseless loss, and that ‘good’ stays firmly put in your lives for many, many years.
