Tears Burn My Eyes

 

Isn't’ she cute?  Meet 15-year-old Chicagoan Hadiyah Pendleton. 

This King College Preparatory High School student had the thrill of a lifetime when, as head majorette, she led the school’s marching band past the reviewing stand where the President of the United States and his family cheered them on.

King high is one of Chicago’s eight selective enrollment secondary schools, which means the 900 students who attend had to apply for admittance and were accepted based on their academic achievement and test scores.  It is located in the Kenwood neighborhood on Chicago’s south side – less than a mile from the Hyde Park residence of Michelle and Barack Obama.

Yesterday, King dismissed Pendleton and her 16-year-old friend because of exams, so they decided to spend the unusual free time at a nearby park.  That’s where Hadiyah and the boy she was with were caught in the crossfire of two gangs shooting it out in broad daylight, right there in the open.

The boy was seriously injured.  Hadiyah is dead.  Dead. 

I lived in Chicago for for many years.  I lived in Hyde Park where my son attended pre-school and his first three years of elementary school.  The dominant influence in that area is the renowned University of Chicago.  Many of Hadiyah’s classmates were probably children of members of the faculty. 

This is a tragedy that should smack the gun lobby upside their stubborn heads.  Even they should be able to understand the unbearable irony of this child’s loss of life.  Even though Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has pulled all investments in gun manufacturers from the city’s pension fund, nothing seems to keep the illegal handguns out of the hands of society’s miscreants.

I have always believed that the only solution is to outlaw the manufacture of handguns marketed to the general public.  I can’t tell you how many of my like-minded friends – i.e., likeminded in most things – have told me “that will never happen.  It just won’t.”

But I know what’s true.  Even if we wised up and stopped gun manufacturers from producing Saturday Night Specials and similar weapons, they would be made elsewhere and smuggled into the country the same way drugs are today. 

Tears keep burning the backs of my eyes.  Children are dying in parks at 2 p.m.  Children are dying in their classrooms, seated at their desks.  Our jobs as adults are to protect children from these dangers.  We are failing.  Miserably.

Domain Name Changed

Thanks to my failure to renew my domain name in time, I have had to revert to the standard Blogger format:  linthesoutheast.blogspot.com.  All my newer posts can be found there.

It’s Official. I Have Mellowed With Age

Max: “Ms. L, you are not going to believe this, but the headlamp I ordered to replace yours is broken.”

Ms. L:  (Long silence, looking quizzically at Max, her official Lexus service professional) “Oh…whaaaat…hahahahahahaha…you have GOT to be kidding.”

He wasn’t.  For the fourth time since just before Christmas, I was escorted to another Courtesy Car to drive while, once again, the most popular dealer in Metro Atlanta tried to remedy my 7-year-old car’s seemingly simple problem.

Several months ago I noticed condensation inside the headlight housing on the passenger side.  Having never heard of such a thing in my life, I probably decided it was some kind of rare fluke and promptly forgot about it.  Since I enter the car on the driver’s side and don’t normally do a walk-around on the car each time I drive it, it was several weeks before I noticed the droplets of water still hanging out inside the glass.

When I finally got around to calling Max, he told me two things:

1. It had to be fixed before it shorted out the computer at the bottom of the lamp, causing the entire electrical system to be destroyed.

2. He had a guy who, for $155, would take the lamp apart to dry all the elements and then seal it back up so no moisture could leak back in.  Otherwise, I was looking at “around $1,000” to get a new assembly.

Great!  That’s why I continue to take my car to the dealer instead of looking for cheaper ways out with local mechanics.  I have had way too many bad experiences with that. 

“Let’s do it,” I said.

That time I got to drive a brand new, almost top-of-the-line Lexus home.  It was spectacular to look at and had so many cockpit-like instruments, I couldn’t figure out how to start the damned thing.

The next day, I picked up my newly sealed car and reluctantly returned the keys for the 2013 GS sedan.  It was raining that day.

By the time I drove the 15 miles from the dealer to my home, the droplets had returned.  It was the week before Christmas and the guy who “fixed” the lamp was going to Puerto Rico for the Holidays.  He’d be back in a week.

Now I’m a little stressed about it all.  I had already ignored the problem for much too long.  What if this was the week the computer at the bottom of that light bit the dust?  But, I was too busy with Christmas preparations to worry about it.

The day after New Year’s I took my car back for the guy with the magic sealer to try again, at his expense, of course.  This time my loaner was the 2013 version of my 2005 RX 330, the small SUV.  It was bigger, fancier and, of course, cleaner than mine, but the thrill was offset by a minor sense of inconvenience.  Since the work had a money-back guarantee, I had no doubt this time the fix would “take.” This guy is going to be annoyed with himself for not doing it right the first time, and time is money.

When I picked up the car this time, I was so sure the problem had been remedied, I again forgot to check it for a few days.  When I did remember to look, I burst into loud laughter.  Not only was it wet, it was wetter than it had ever been.

I have always made the sacrifices necessary to buy good cars with the kind of service ethic that is strongly customer-focused.  It just made my life a bit easier, especially while I was working long hours and keeping tight schedules.  So, it wasn’t surprising that before I could call Max this time, he called me.

“I’m just calling to see if the headlight is okay, since it is nasty outside today.”

He was beside himself when I gave him the answer.  I was thinking about a refund.

He asked to try it one more time because this guy had done dozens of these repairs and this had never happened before.  If that didn’t work, he would refund my money and we’d go from there.

We did and it didn’t.  Even the bright red courtesy SUV I was given to drive couldn’t cheer me up anymore.  This was getting old.

I received the refund in the mail yesterday, so I took the car in this morning to finally get this thing behind me.  A brand new, $640 switch-out (ouch, but at least it wasn’t the $1,000 Max had guessed at in the beginning) was probably what I should have done in the first place, but all this was costing me was time and a little gasoline.  Besides, I kind of enjoyed getting out of the house and dressing up a little bit to be presentable. 

I took my laptop and was in the lounge eating a zucchini and walnut muffin they provided and sipping on a hot herbal tea.  I had just read a post and was about to comment when I looked up to see Max standing in front of me.  I knew it couldn’t have been  finished that fast, but I never considered he was there to disappoint me one more time.

He was. 

As I listened to the impeccably dressed young Courtesy Car manager tell me how to go about driving the little white hybrid model they were sending me home in today, I couldn’t help but smile at myself.  There was a time when I would have gone absolutely ballistic on Max.  I wouldn’t have cared much about the fact that he had nothing to do with breaking the new part, at least not as far as I knew.  I would have been demanding compensation for all my time, my gas, and my exasperation at the piss-poor job they had done on this minor repair problem.

Instead I got excited about getting to drive a hybrid car for the first time.  I was happy the traffic had lightened considerably as I tried to get comfortable behind the wheel of this nearly bottom-of-the-line model which had me feeling as if I were sitting about six inches above the pavement.  And I loved the sports-car-like ride and handling, the very swift pickup and perfect cornering.

Tomorrow I get to do it all again.  It’s okay.  Whatever happens, it won’t be the end of the world.  Besides, I still haven’t driven that $72,000 LS!

FLOTUS ON DISPLAY

Like millions of other smitten Americans, I was pretty much tethered to the TV on Inauguration Day.  The day was magical, almost as surreal to this sexagenarian dreamer as the first swearing in of Barack H. Obama as President of the United States had been four years ago.

The President’s speech was everything I had hoped for and much more.  His delivery was ministerial at times, soaring with cadence and historical imagery.  He looked fit and rested and happy as he opened each new topic with a measured and dramatic “We…the people.” It sounded so inclusive and I felt so included.

When it became obvious that he was making a sharp left turn in his political message, mentioning so many issues that matter so much to me, the grin on my face widened and stuck there.  Gay marriage rights.  Immigration.  The environment.  Women’s rights to equal treatment.  Gun control.  Booyah, Mr. President!

The singers sang their hearts out, the prayers prayed their eloquent prayers and the poet spoke his free verse about the oneness of our existence. One teeny, tiny flub in the oath-taking; this time it was POTUS who stumbled.  No matter.  He’s so human.  He’s so real.  He is so one of us.

As down to earth as the Obamas are, it is easy for my attention to shift from all the pomp and circumstance, all the historical meaning of the moment to their personhood.  It wasn’t long before I started to be concerned for them. 

What happens when they need a pit stop?  What if one of them is battling the same stomach bug that knocked me on my ass two weeks ago?  Their smiles both seem so geniuine – I wonder if their cheeks are starting to twitch.

Mrs. Obama looks so elegant and fit, so comfortable in her role.  If I were she, I’d be worrying about the humidity in the air, if any, because my new hairdo might start “swelling.”  Look at those boots!  She’s walking on concrete for blocks in those stilleto boots.  Ouch.  My bunions throb in sympathy.

Every station has some talking head commenting – not on the content of the speech or the profound symbolism of this day which coincided serendipitously with the national holiday commemorating the life and contributions of Martin Luther King – but on Michelle’s bangs.  Her J. Crew accessories on her sleek and elegant Thom Brown design. 

Poor Michelle.  It’s not enough she must often hide her own light under a bushel of First Ladylike causes and activities.  Now she must spend inordinate amounts of time and thought on the one thing I doubt she cared all that much about before taking up residence in a fish bowl.  Our admiration of her has transformed her from a woman of substance with beaucoup brains to a vacuous fashion icon. 

If I were in that position that would annoy me no end.  I’m already obsessive about making a good impression, always minding my Ps and Qs.  I can just imagine waking up on the morning of Inauguration Day knowing I wouldn’t have a minute to myself outside of a restroom stall for the next 18 hours.  My first instinct would be to crawl back into bed. 

Schedules.  Hairdresser.  Makeup artist. False eyelashes. Is it windy?  Am I bloated?  Will I freeze in that thin coat?   Will I shiver in front of the world?  Please don’t let me stumble on those capitol stairs, ‘cuz I have to be cool and not grab his hand.  Will the kids be okay?  I hope they don’t get too silly; there will be cameras up their nostrils all day.

When the time came for FLOTUS to make her appearance at the ball, the TV personalities had whipped the viewers into a frenzy, speculating on which new American little-known designer would have her magic wand waved above his or her head. 

BREAKING NEWS!  Michelle Shocks the fashion world by choosing a stunning gown by the same designer she anointed four years ago.  Jason Wu, again?!?

Oh, no.  This will cause a flap.  She should have given somebody else a chance.  Jason Wu is already filthy rich just because she wore his white gown in 2009.

Now she’s dancing.  Who’s that guy… Oh, yeah, The President of the United States is also on the stage.  Can’t see her shoes, but reports are they were made by Jimmy Choo and they are ivory silk.  And she’s wearing a diamond ring designed especially for the occasion by some other woman I’ve never heard of.  Bangles!  She’s wearing bangles.

She was stunning.  The President was so handsome, doing his hipster dipster slow dance with a military officer.  The officer who cut in on the President was talking up a storm to Michelle, proud as he could be.

By this time I was exhausted.  I was tired of looking at her.  I was tired of hearing about everything but her underwear.  I was blown away by her choice of gown, as usual, but…

Enough, already.

Gotta go.  I have to call my beauty salon to schedule my new haircut!

Oscar Has His Work Cut Out for Him

I did it.  Yesterday I completed my quest to see each of the nine movies nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook,Zero Dark Thirty

These films are all outstanding.  With such a large and rich field from which to choose, the winner will not be justified in believing it was truly the best picture in 2012 – it will just have gotten more votes than any of the others, even if it is only by one or two.

If I were forced to rank these excellent offerings every day for a week, my guess is my rankings would change each day, according to my mood.  That might sound odd to anyone else who has also seen all nine titles, because all of them are dark on some level.  Yes, 2012 Hollywood was fixated on serious, stark, violent and seemingly hopeless depictions of the world’s human condition.

Lincoln and Django Unchained deal with the politics of 1860s America, the lead-up to and the four-year span of the War Between the States, and the evolution of the man who is credited for ending the shameful yet profitable practice of slavery.  While Lincoln was visually and contextually riveting, Django Unchained was difficult to watch for its relentless devotion to realism. But, perhaps for the first time, it showed the truth about the hearts and souls of the enslaved people.  They were not weak and stupid, but strategic and wily.  Each in his or her own way found a way to survive a personal hell, but never did they lose their senses of self. They loved hard, they hated hard, and they did what they had to do. 

Les Misérables, in all its musical glory, takes a similar story in a different context a step further by addressing the actual revolt of common people against tyrannical monarchy.  It again deals with the rich and powerful and how they ignore the poor, who are forced to steal, sell their bodies in prostitution, and even sell their hair. 

 Argo and Zero Dark Thirty both take us behind the mysterious doors of American intelligence operations.  Both movies are based on true stories, although Argo has been criticized by many Canadian observers who believe the roles of Canadian diplomats in the recovery of six American hostages held in Iran were seriously under-emphasized.  Zero Dark Thirty, marketed as 100% true, takes the viewer on the wildly risky route to the killing of Osama bin Laden, and shines a light on the female CIA agent who pushed trough layer after layer of second-guessing to get that done.  “Dark” doesn’t begin to describe the torture scenes.

Beasts of the Southern Wild, a film unlike any I can recall, tells the story of a six-year-old child living with her alcoholic father in “The Bathtub,” a Southern Delta community of impoverished Americans who are clearly just getting by on a whim and a prayer.  Hush Puppy is a little girl with an imagination to match her superior intelligence who Wink, her father, is trying to prepare for life after his impending death.  The combination of the grinding reality of poverty with the fantastical machinations of a child’s mind gives this masterpiece an other-worldly feel.  The actress who plays Hush Puppy, now age 9, has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Decorated director Ang Lee provides the usual visual feast in his Life of Pi.  The main character, nicknamed “Pi,” finds himself alone on a large lifeboat after the ship he and his family and their zoo animals were aboard sank.  This story of survival is as much about the creativity of the human mind under dire stress as it is the 200 plus days Pi stays alive while drifting.  It is a thing of beauty to watch.

Silver Linings Playbook was an unexpected surprise for me.  Based on comments some Facebook friends had made, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  What I found was a masterfully written and acted treatment of two people plagued with mental illness, with characters so appealing in their struggles, the viewer falls in love with them both.  I have a strong feeling that Jennifer Lawrence, who has already won the Golden Globe for Best Actress, will also win the Oscar.  She is a true star.

Although I am a big fan of foreign language films, for some reason I waited until the very last to see Amour.  As it turns out, it will be the one out of the nine that will stay with me for a long time, maybe forever.  It is a simple,slow-moving story of a French couple in their 80s.  They are happily relaxing in their old age, when the wife is stricken with a series of brain events that leave her a complete invalid.

This is the kind of movie that doesn’t sugar-coat much and which will not let you take your eyes off the screen, in spite of very long periods of total silence and no action at all.  And it deals with a topic that scares me to my core. 

None of us know how we will leave this life and we definitely have very little to say about it.  Yes, we all try our best to protect our hearts, our lungs, our bones and our brains, but who really knows for sure?  The idea of becoming unable to move one side of my body is terrifying enough, but a second stroke could send me into speaking gibberish, wetting the bed, wearing diapers and being absolutely dependent on some other person.  The character in this film has her husband, whose love for his wife is tested beyond imagination. 

Who would do that for me? I cannot think of anyone I’d wish that burden upon, and let me be clear, it would be a burden.  Even the people who are paid to care for patients in such dire straits are not likely to be able to resist the moments of exasperation provided by such patients.  Left with nothing resembling dignity, the only power the character in the movie could wield was refusal to eat and drink.

The actors in this little film are superb.  Emmanuelle Riva, who plays the patient, could very well upset the field and take the Oscar.  She has burrowed her way into the soul of my deepest fears and put the finest possible point on the prospect of age-related illnesses.

Never Give Up on a Kid

 

Warts and all. That’s the way I like to tell my stories.  That’s the way I look at myself and the people I love.  There are no perfect people in real life.  Just flawed, broken, struggling human beings who make decisions; some good ones, some bad ones. 

My nephew has a story that can only be told by starting from the beginning.  And so I will.  Let’s call him Red.  That’s what he was called in the streets of Chicago.

Red was born exactly 8 months after my own son, in the spring of 1970.  His mother is my sister, his father a brilliant hometown high school football hero.  They married very young – much too young – but not for the usual reason that required fathers to load their shotguns.  They were simply in love and wanted to be together.

Red’s Dad joined the U.S. Marine Corps and took my sister off to Santa Ana, California to be a military wife in a very strange land. Eventually, Red’s Dad was shipped over to Viet Nam and his Mom returned to the family to wait out the unbearable days and nights that had Red’s Dad crawling in the muggy jungles of a land unheard of by any of us before The War.

Red’s Dad survived the war, at least physically, and, after his honorable discharge from the Marines, returned to our Midwestern home town to set up housekeeping with his young wife.  Red was conceived on purpose, in a two-parent stable home, not too long after that.

War is ugly, especially for those who actually leave their homes to fight them.  Red’s Dad was among the walking wounded who saw too much and heard too much and did too many horrible things in order to stay alive.  His reward?  Flashbacks, screaming night terrors, unspeakable memories.  He turned to alcohol, something he had always enjoyed socially. 

As much in love as they were, my sister and Red’s Dad couldn’t find room in their relationship for the third party – booze.  My sister asked him to leave and live with his “mistress” alone.  Eventually, he took up with someone else and she decided to marry a man who lived in Florida.  Thinking the best thing for Red at age 6 was to have daily access to his father, my sister made the impossible decision to leave her child in the care of a Wounded Warrior.

Red doesn’t talk much about those years.  Suffice it to say his father provided him access to a private school education to foster the child’s unusual intelligence, encouraged his son’s inherited gift of athleticism, and continued to lose his footing from the emotional baggage he brought home from Viet Nam.

Red took his straight A’s and his loneliness to the streets of Chicago.  He joined a notorious gang that he says provided a sense of belonging he desperately sought.  He did what notorious gang members do, except he simultaneously earned a scholarship to a prominent university in the Southwest. 

Red went to college.  He couldn’t adjust to the change of environment, from urban and tough, to rustic and serene.  He couldn’t relate to his roommate from a country outside the U.S.  He couldn’t shake his severe homesickness. 

When Red dropped out of college as a freshman, his father and mother were both livid.  They didn’t understand how Red could walk away from such a great opportunity. So what did Red do to try to make amends?  He joined the U.S. Marine Corps, without talking to anyone.  He believed that would restore his father’s pride in him.  Instead, it made matters much, much worse.

It has never been clear to me what Red expected to encounter after his ill-conceived decision to join up.  It is entirely possible all he had to go on was the glory heaped on the tough guys who manage to make it through boot camp, since his father never, ever wanted to talk about the reality of his own experience.

Whatever his expectations, he found himself in combat, first in Panama.  There he saw his buddy die instantly beside him from a shot to the head.  Next he was deployed to Operation Desert Storm because Iraq refused to leave Kuwait.  There he operated a shoulder-mounted missile launcher.  He never talks about the killing he had to do.

Still physically unscathed, Red somehow wound up on the island of Okinawa.  This was not combat, so I guess he had way too much time on his hands. He found a way to use his off-the-charts intelligence to figure out a way to “trick” Japanese ATMs into dispensing money he didn’t own.  He landed in a Japanese prison where he languished for months and had his leg purposely broken by the guards. He also traded his Catholicism for Islam.

I found a civilian attorney willing to take on the Japanese military prison system and Red’s Mom wrote checks for thousands of dollars as we worked to extricate her child from his own series of very bad decisions.  He left the USMC with a General Discharge, which is given to service members whose performance is satisfactory but is marked by a considerable departure in duty performance and conduct expected of military members. 

It was far from easy or without speed bumps along the way, but Red finally found his way to becoming a productive human being.  While he sowed his wild oats and produced a total of four, maybe five, children in the process, he also entered a university program to work toward a bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering Technology.  He graduated with honors and landed a job in telecommunications, where he has worked ever since. 

In the meantime, he gained primary custody of three of his children, including the two youngest he had with his now ex-wife.  He spends all his time with his kids and other people’s kids in his role as sports commissioner in their Georgia town. The children he has raised alone are smart, well-mannered and talented; his oldest son is now a freshman in college. 

There is probably enough blame for Red’s troubles to spread around.  As a man in his forties now, he places most of the  blame on his own poor choices, but that’s only part of the truth. I can say without hesitation that the credit for his ultimate success  -- and I consider him a huge success – is the simple fact that no one in his family was willing to write him off. 

It was tough.  I was involved on a level that had me bailing him out of jail and sitting in courtrooms in support.  I cried for my sister, who struggled with guilt for her decision to leave him with his father.  I laid awake at night imagining the hell he was enduring in combat. 

It is impossible to know how one child can be a relative breeze to raise, while another from the same background and circumstances can make so many wrong turns.  There is no magic formula, with the exception of one element:

Never, ever give up on a kid.

ARGO dissed; reason not on the screen

I fed the beast again today.  That would be the one that lures $20 bills out of my shallow pockets each week during Hollywood’s awards season.

I had to see for myself how a movie nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture could not garner a nod for the film’s director.  In this case, it is the affable Ben Affleck, who played the lead role at the same time he directed Argo.  This is a film that Rotten Tomatoes certifies “Fresh” at 96%, while a comparable 94% of audiences love it.

I always believe the measure of a movie based on a true story is whether or not it transcends the “problem” of almost everyone knowing how it ends.  Argo obliterated that issue by making the action so brisk and the suspense so realistic, I caught myself holding my breath and squeezing the sap out of the arms of the seat all the way to the end.

Argo is the story of a Carter-era Iran Hostage Crisis sidebar.  It is not about the horrendous 444 days (November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981) that 52 Americans spent as hostages after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American Embassy in Tehran in support of the Iranian Revolution. The were also demanding the return by the U.S. of their deposed Shah, who sought and was given asylum in America.

No, this is the story of six people in that embassy who managed to escape the building. They find under-cover sanctuary in Canada’s embassy and CIA operative Tony Mendez master-minded a covert scheme that involves creating a phony Hollywood film to extricate the six from their almost certain death.
I’m not saying Affleck should have been nominated for his acting in this one, although he did a fine job.  This is one of those films with an ensemble cast that spreads the star power evenly, making a standout performance almost impossible.

But directing?  This movie is intricate, tight, and authentic looking (including the ridiculous bowl-cut hair styles for men of the stylistically forgettable 1970s).  There are street scenes that telegraph the claustrophobic crush of humanity moving around the Grand Bazaar of Tehran.  There are close-in camera shots, angry mobs, wild-eyed soldiers chasing a jumbo jet down an airport runway.  And the movie never slows down long enough for anyone to risk leaving the theater.

Ben Affleck was robbed.  Maybe he is being slyly punished for the time he spent as a member of Bennifer, that nauseating time he spent dating the questionably talented Jennifer Lopez.  Maybe the academy had a hard time, as I did, keeping their eyes off the mop of hair he sports as Mendez.  Was it real or was it a wig?  Those kinds of details should never be that distracting.

It’s hard to say what goes on in the minds of “those Hollywood types.”  I happen to be well-acquainted with one of them and sometimes he baffles me, too.

“It’s Just a Dog”

 

Romeo (right) with main squeeze Coqui in 2006

I’m sure we have all heard someone make this assertion, usually when we ourselves are frantic over the health and well-being of our treasured pets.  Many times, the person making such pronouncements does not own pets, or if they do, they are the “only in the backyard and NEVER in my house” sorts.

For the past six months, I have watched my next-door neighbor disprove that just-a-dog attitude.  For the past three months, I have been actively involved in the care of a failing dog who over time became deaf, half-blind, and incontinent due to renal failure.  He had a cough that racked his well-muscled, hairless little body. The veterinarian could only guess at the cause without conducting hundreds of dollars of tests. 

My friend and I began talking about euthanasia about a month ago.  She made me promise to tell her the truth when I thought the time had come to put the poor animal out of his misery.  The truth?  Does anyone really know for sure?  But I promised I would give my honest opinion each time she asked.

Although the dog’s intense anxiety kept him up at night barking at the closet door or running up and down the stairs whimpering; and although my friend is severely sleep deprived because of Romeo’s night terrors, every time she tried a new drug – Xanax, Prozac, anti-biotics --  he would improve for a day, maybe two, and she would lose her resolve.  She convinced herself that the quality of Romeo’s life was still good because he would calm down during long walks and he still had his voracious appetite for doggie treats. 

My friend was conflicted by the idea that she might be making the decision to put Romeo down, not for him, but for her own sake.  Her productivity at work was slipping badly.  She ate very little.  And she was getting little to no sleep. Just like a parent of a human child, she could not bring herself to accept the fact that things were getting worse by the day, and she refused to hear me when I told her the dog had to be in pain.

Tuesday night, Romeo was a basket case.  When morning finally arrived, my friend called the vet, made an appointment and decided, alone, that it was time.  However, when she came home early from work to get the dog for the appointment, he had once again rallied.  He wasn’t coughing,  He wasn’t pacing.  He seemed happy.  He had, however, left puddles all over the house.

I knew when she called that she had fallen into another pocket of false hope.  I knew she didn’t want to hear what I had to say, and I was determined not to be the one who made the decision for her.  It had to be hers and hers alone.

That’s a rough role to play.  I did insist she keep the appointment, and she did. 

The next phone call was gut-wrenching.  She was crying and terribly conflicted.  She wanted the vet to tell her what he would do.  Of course, he wouldn’t.  What he did say was that it was reasonable to euthanize the dog at this time; that he would refuse to do it if he thought it was too early.  On the other hand, he could do $300 worth of new tests to determine if the dog’s heart was the cause of the cough.  If so, heart medication could extend the dog’s life for around 8 months.  If not, the cough was from the lungs.  That could mean lung cancer, since the anti-biotics for an assumed respiratory infection hadn’t worked.

“Lezlie, what should I do?”

Still, she wanted someone else to make a decision.

Instead, I walked her through the pros and cons, the ifs the ands and the buts.  Then I asked if the possibility of extending the dog’s life for up to 8 months was something she was prepared to handle, because none of these tests and medications was going to do anything about Romeo’s severe anxiety.  And then I asked this question:

“What would you be telling me if the dog in question was Coqui (my dog)?”

She said, “Ok.  I think I know what I’m going to do.”

In order to try to make peace with her decision, she went ahead and let the vet conduct the tests.  These tests required sedation, and the vet had to use so much of the sedative to calm Romeo down, he feared he would die from an overdose. 

It turned out the cough was not heart-related, but there was a lot of fluid in the dog’s lungs.  The vet also determined there was pretty severe arthritis in the hind-quarters, which were indisputably painful.

When she finally came home last night, she came home alone.  She is inconsolable and unable to go to work for the rest of the week.  When I called and asked how she was doing this morning, she remarked at how surreal it was to come downstairs to an empty house for the first time in almost 14 years. She can’t stop crying.

The next time you are tempted to say “it’s just a dog” to anyone, please remember this story.