It isn't often that we think of death as a miracle, but the impending transition from this life to another, hopefully better one at the Rainbow Bridge has been an odyssey my girl Lacey and I have shared together. There are so many lessons in her last days on this earth. She prepares to leave this planet with the same grace she showed all 11 years of her life. No longer able to make it on her own, she turns to me for care and solace on a path that neither of us would have chosen.
I sit with her, petting and talking to her, in a way that I should have done so much more in the past. When she could no longer lift herself to eat, I hand fed her and brought cool, refreshing water to her lips to quench her thirst. I wash her body, and wrap her in warm towels to bring her comfort. Would that I had the power to change the course of her all too short life, but that is left to a force far greater than I.
From the moment I first saw Lacey and her sister Cagney when they were little 8 week old beigy cotton balls, I held them in my arms one at a time, looking into their frightened eyes, determined to keep them from harm. It was an icy cold day in the middle of winter and we were knee deep in snow. My original intention that day, if I did anything at all, was to take her sister, but looking at her face and what appeared to be a broken tail, I knew I couldn't leave her behind to some uncertain fate. The two of them came into the world together and I knew they had to spend their lives together. It would be two days before they could reach my vet and check my references before letting me take them home.
The next ten years were a blur of activity, a movie on fast forward. My sweet baby girls grew up, then, before my eyes grew old, rarely out of each other's view. They adored one other and loved me with abandon, these incredible creatures sharing the air I breathed. We slept in the same bed till time took away their ability to make the climb. Then they both lay right next to the bed, comfortable in the knowledge we were all together.
Those of us in tune with the animals that populate our worlds know, from the moment we see them that this day is coming. We push it to the back of our minds and tell ourselves it's a long way off. And it is . . . till it isn't. The real miracle in all of it is the time we get to spend together, the purest form of love we get to share, and a loyalty we witness that is beyond human comprehension. So it is with humility and a sea of tears that I prepare myself for the final moment, for it is surely at hand, and I thank God for giving me a glimpse into what heaven must be like.
faithful Wiley is lying at my feet now as I write this. He never leaves my side. I am not ready to let him go.......We have other pets, but there will never be another Wiley. He is the ten pound, long haired Chihuahua playing with pug Grover when Grover was a puppy.
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