Day 1
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.” Matthew 10:29 ****** Dear Alex, A good death he had, a doctor once told me in a case study. What would qualify a finale, yours and mine, as good? My four-legged companion of 13 years, a maltese sized slighter than a loaf of braided bread, might have fit the criteria of a good death. She passed yesterday morning, absent of pain, minimally distressed, her death in progress orchestrated with the ER crew in exorbitant detail. The last injections of high-dosed, rapid-acting anesthetics, propofol followed by pentobarbital, transferred her diminishing three-pound presence bearing on my arms into a cloud of grief to be questioned. Why this morning, not next week or Winter, without being granted another cycle of taking her out to the lawn before sunrise and twilight? Her breakfast bowl I’d laid out on her silicone mat by my bed and hers before our emergent drive to the ...
