On July 13th of this year, my wife and I lost one of our Pembroke Welsh Corgis at the age of 12. Obviously when you have a pet, a part of your mind knows the day will come. You just try not to think about it. We had two of them, littermate sisters. Both had genetic conditions as a result of sketchy breeding, and one of them ended up with Lupus. Essentially she had no immune system and has been on medications and treatments her whole life. Many years ago, our vet told us that more than likely she wouldn't live as long as her sister. It was heartbreaking news, but we did our best to give them both the most awesome life possible. What happened though caught us completely off guard. Our (mostly) healthy girl was the one to go first, and without going into unnecessary detail she went out HARD. She experienced 3 days of suffering while we did our best to find out what was wrong and attempt to treat it. It's a long story but the emergency animal hospital we used (our normal, awesome vet wasn't open that weekend) was grossly incompetent and completely failed to notice a large tumor in her. Had we known we would have ended her suffering much earlier. 

The loss absolutely gutted us both. We expected our little Lupus girl to be the one to go first. Instead it was the complete opposite. I'm soooooooooooo thankful that she's still here and hanging on, but I swear I've never missed a dog quite like I do Penny. I can't shake the feeling that she went through so much unnecessary pain while we tried to find out what was wrong. Makes me feel like the worst animal parent ever.  I guess it's made worse by the fact that we never had kids, so our 'girls' have been our kids. I find myself watching our surviving Corgi with apprehension, thrilled that she's here with me but dreading what I know will come sooner than later.

Then on August 28, my mother passed away two days before what would have been her 75th birthday. It was ruled a natural death, so we didn't have an autopsy done. By all indications she had a heart attack in her sleep. I believe it was related to a low sodium level brought on by excessive drinking. Mom had more or less poured herself into the bottle the last few years of her life. We always had a complicated and more often than not unpleasant relationship. It started when I was a teenager. Even though I was a good kid that never got into trouble with the law, partied, did drugs or anything, she treated me as if I had. I could never figure that out. She had this way of drawing me in close with affection, only to hold me at arm's length. There's a LOT to unpack there, but to sum it up I spent most of my teenager years and adult life wanting affection but also being afraid of it. When I began dating she would 'test' girlfriends to the point that they usually gave up and decided I wasn't worth it. When I met who would become my wife, she did the push-pull thing so much and so often with her that my wife openly admitted to hating her and not wanting a relationship with her at all. 

I could always count on mom to dredge up ancient arguments and grill me relentlessly on why I had behaved the way I had. It was never her fault, only mine. Only in more recent years did she seem to feel remorse for the way things had gone, but by then the alcohol had well taken root and she was either bitter or drunk happy. I never knew what I was going to get, so I had to approach every interaction with considerable apprehension. 

Now that she's gone, I feel like I'm on some horrible roller coaster of emotion. I feel terrible that I don't feel as sad as I did when my dad killed himself when I was 25, yet at the same time kind of understand why I don't? I find myself getting a little defensive of the fact that my wife doesn't miss her at all, and has made a few remarks here and there that I've found callous. To sum it up I feel like shit for not missing her more and feel like shit for missing her as much as I do. 

Couple this with the fact that things are going really bad at work, and I don't even feel like doing the things I would normally find fun or enjoyable and I just feel miserable 24/7. When I have days off I just want to stay in bed. When I'm home from work I want to take long naps. Being asleep feels so much better than feeling miserable. I've struggled a lot with depression since I was a pre-teen, and there are good and not so good times, but I feel like the older I get, the good ones are fewer and farther between.