Touched by death

You never expect it, most often fear it, and do not know how to deal with it, but death always hits you like a force to be reckoned with. My companion and love for the last 7 years, Tiramisu died yesterday. Her death was painful and a release, so relief was one of the foremost emotions I felt when I heard the news. We had her admitted at the animal hospital at Parel since a week and each day was a struggle to try and delay the inevitable. Dogs are fragile, Labradors more so, and her kidneys had given out. There was very little hope but we still fought, battled against all consuming blackness till the very last day. Hope is such a treacherous emotion, it betrays you into believing the impossible. And that is what we did. Hope against hope that her Creatinine & Ammonia levels would go down. That she would stop seizing and start eating food. And that she would come home soon with us. 

13 hours a day at the Animal hospital takes a toll on you mentally, physically and emotionally. It plays with your mind and makes you as fragile as a fruitcake. I no longer cared for how I looked or what anybody thought. I did not care for what I ate or whether I slept or not. People who met me in these 7 days will know how different I was. Not normal for sure. But when someone you care about the most in the world is in distress, very little matters. 

By the end of the 7 days the senior doctors had told us that there was nothing that could be done and that we needed to take a decision. The junior doctors still wanted to fight, but we pondered over how much more pain we could let her go through. The day she died is the day we would have made the hardest decision ever. And she saved us from that too. The guilt that would have inevitably creeped up and made us wonder whether we were killing her and whether it was too soon. By going away on her own, she saved us from potentially blaming ourselves. That was Tiramisu. Gracious in life and in death. The gentlest of souls with an elegance that was uncanny. I hope she is in a better place now. And I know that I will miss her forever. 

Touched by death, lets live now.