16th August

 The grief is easing. It is a little smaller. I have cried so much. And I burst into tears at the drop of a hat, for anything, for nothing. My memories are softening very quickly. I cannot entirely remember the spark leaving him. It blurs. The sharp details are sifting away. My brain doing its usual defensive scrubbing no doubt. Oh this seems bad. Shall we start scrubbing this out.

It feels like one more level of betrayal. An easing and trivialising of his passing. Selfish. I deserve that pain.

I went out to a BBQ yesterday, something that had been arranged a month earlier. Stops me dwelling. Ish. Stops me crashing into sadness. Ish. I drifted at the BBQ. I accidentally saw a picture of Ares on my phone. I stopped. Don't. Look. I closed it. My mind didn't let go of it. 10 minutes later I had to look. Opened my phone. Looked. There he was. He didn't look utterly awful. He was ok. I had betrayed him. Robbed him of days. I made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake. I am beyond an awful person.

I closed the phone. Wracked by guilt. I am a monster. Everyone around me doesn't know the monster I am. It went around and around and around in my head. Monster. Waves of sadness and guilt went through me. Sitting amongst talking people. Devoured in plain sight. Another lesson in the subtle stealth such horrors can exhibit.

I wrestle with the guilt. A lot. It haunts me. Everyone tells me I did the right thing.

They don't know.

It's possible he would have fell again. Fitted again. He was tired. And increasingly frail.

And it's possible that was a blip. I know he was not great. Old. Wobbly. Tired. I know that nothing could have prevented his eventual death. That nothing would fix his increasing ailments. His evil patch of skin on the back of his neck that was stubbornly slow to heal.

But it comes to this. Did he have more time. More breakfasts. More treats. More wags of his tail. Even a days worth. Two days. Could I have tried more things. Second opinion. Looked at treating him for cushings. Did I rob him of time ? Can you equivocally say, you did not ?

You cannot.

I made a bad call. I should have waited.

Everyone else says I was right. They don't know. What are they going to say ? Yeah, you are bad. They're not going to say that. They even absolutely believe that I did no wrong. They are not lying to me. But that does not make them right either. Just human.

I am not sure if I will forgive myself for it. I know it is not clear cut. I know that by some measures it was a kindness. The right time. The vet said he had some fluid build up internally. He had pale gums, jaundiced eyes. But very brutally, I know that I may well have robbed him of time. Even if it were a single day. Robbed him of dinner. Of breakfast. Of a cuddle. I am haunted by the fact I could have tried different solutions. Taken him off his meds that were bad for his liver. Tried a cushings treatment. Other anti inflammatories. I have a horrible suspicion the vets missed it. It was borderline.

I don't blame them.

I blame me.

I always have to do better.

And I failed at a critical point.

I became fatigued at the BBQ. A facet of my other travails of this year. The fatigue. The shit having been kicked out of me. So I went home, wiped.

40 minutes after being home, a new development.

My back seized. Developing over 5 minutes, ramping up into severe pain. I couldn't breathe. And worryingly the edges of my sight grew dim, and static started to invade. Oh no. I'm going to pass out. 

At one point I struggled to get back up stairs, my vision dimmed a lot. Get. To. The. Bed. Before. I. Pass. Out.

Hazel gave me some meds. Some gel on my back. She said the muscle there was bulging.

I spent the rest of the evening largely immobile trying not to make it flare up.

A new fresh hell.