A Difficult Week - The True End of an Era

This might be a sad one.

I'm not really into spilling my guts on this blog and making it all emotional, but I'd really like to keep this thing updated, and frankly, this is what's on my mind.

It's really weird that I titled my last post what I did because it really is the end of an era for me in some bigger ways. My grandmother passed away this last week and we found out that our family dog has a tumor.

My grandmother's passing was coming. She was 95, and had been ill for some time now. She was miserable at the end and it was definitely time for her to go. She had lived an extremely full and successful life: raised 7 children, had 14 grandchildren, 13 great grandchildren, wrote books, received 2 Masters degrees, 1 PhD, became a Swami, the list goes on. She was an amazing woman, the matriarch of our family, and her legacy will live on.

Finding out about my dog's tumor was absolutely devastating for me. Before this past week, I've never had to deal with death, and I've been in complete denial about the fact that Raja (my dog) has been getting pretty old. He's 12. I've been telling myself and everyone around me that he's going to live till he's 18 at least. He hasn't died yet, but it's much more of a possibility now since the tumor is right next to his heart on top of the fact that he has the tumor in the 1st place.

Raja, which means "king" in Hindi, has been my rock, "my man" ever since I was traumatized 12 years ago by a horrific break up, plus other by-products of that relationship I had been going through. I got my little black lab puppy on a farm out in the middle of Kansas somewhere. Other than the fact that I had always wanted a dog and never had one, wanted to get a dog to go running with me at night with, and that he was the most adorable thing I had ever seen, I got him to replace my need for " a man". I was done with them. I was so heart broken, I said "F.U." to human boys and got a beautiful black labrador retriever boy and named him "Raja" for my "King". And I'll tell you what, getting him helped me through one of the most difficult times in my life, and 8 more years of the emotional roller-coaster I was on till I decided to get off and start dating my husband 4 years ago.

Like I said, he hasn't passed yet, but tonight I saw him more tired, more slow, and older feeling than I have ever seen him. It was the 1st night since actually finding out about his tumor that I broke down realizing that I have to accept what the situation is. He will die, and he may die soon.

The finality of my grandmother's death I think has been another reason I think I'm out of denial about Raja. The finality being that "she's gone". It's weird. It's weird how she's - just gone. And I realize now, one day, he will be - just gone.

Anyway, I don't want to be all syrupy sad about it all and make this post all depressing, which it would ultimately be considering the subject matter. But, like I said, I just wanted to update this thing, but I wanna keep it real.

Thanks for reading.