Stay!

Tika's home.

It's a relief to have her here.  The one scenario that concerned me - that the service would pick up her body while I was at work on Tuesday - didn't happen as the clinic had arranged for a pick up on Monday.  I don't know, and haven't asked, if that was because they didn't want me to see the pick up or if it was due to the outside influences (let's just say the freezer was getting kind of full...it was a busy week). 

So, I don't have a problem with Tika's cremains in the house. 

However, this?

This is starting to feel like more of an issue, especially when I consider that I've got six live ones still roaming the house.  Everybody (Joey is that obese cat on the rug, then Tillie, Molly, Roscoe, and Tika, as alpha, up on top) is currently living in Julia's room and probably someday she's going to want to know why they're there and if they could please leave.  I have no idea what to do with these.  

Everyone please take a moment to notice my mad computer skillz.  You probably couldn't even really tell that I blacked out the last names on those boxes.  I like to be really proficient in stuff like this, you know, in case the whole vet thing doesn't pan out for me. 

Clearly, I've been through this enough to know that I need to just roll through the stages of grief.  When Tills died, I was so angry because of how bonded she and I had become and she died only about a year after we got her.  I was really angry when Joey died, too, because of the circumstances (he was at a specialty hospital, and I felt/feel that while the outcome would have been the same, the ER vet was too slow to catch the secondary problem, which in turn caused some discomfort for the Doughball).  I'm not angry about Tika.  I had her for about 14 years.  How can I be mad about that? 

What makes me sad, though, is how quickly all of us adjusted to her being gone.  Despite reminding myself, I did pull out her dish the next morning to feed her, and that was sad.  But I don't notice one less dog greeting us, since she had long since stopped that.  And I don't really notice one less dog eating and drinking, since she wasn't really doing those things either.  Today I picked up a blanket that was mushed on the floor before realizing we had put it out for Tika so she could have her own comfy spot since she couldn't get up on furniture anymore.  

I don't reflect back on the recent Tika.  But the early years - the time I took her to the beach and how she collapsed on the way home, when she got her head stuck under my sister's fence, and the time she kept running by our side door in a frenzy to let us know she was not bothered by the salesperson in our house at the time...oh! and the time she ate my entire birthday cake minus one slice which we found under the covers of our bed.  That's the Tika I like to remember.  She makes me laugh.

I think of Tika heaven, too, in which there is plenty of grass, no rain (she hated getting her toes wet), tons of bicycles coming by all the time and no one to stop her from chasing, and the only kids there hold ice cream cones at just her height. 

Comments

[Furniture Quest]

Wow... Very interesting to say the least.

[Joy]

Uh- we have a box in the attic with 7 little boxes in it. We keep saying we need to take them to my parent's property and do the ashes in the wind thing, but haven't gotten around to it. Lenny's time is short- she is having a really hard time these days. She can barely walk. I just hate "making the appointment".

[redzils]

I can relate to that picture with all the little boxes in Julia's room. We finally put them each under a tree at my parents' house.

It felt a little strange, but now we can look at those plants and smile. I hope you figure out a next step that let's you smile too.