BLUE CHRISTMAS
It’s been a roller-coaster ride, at the beginning of this Christmas season, so please forgive me if I seem a little bit out of sorts.
The Christmas puddings are made, the cards are starting to arrive. The lights are up outside, and I’ve put up a few favorite decorations. On Saturday, my best friend and I had lunch at our favorite Indian restaurant, then went to see the Long Beach Shakespeare Company perform Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” which was delightful. Sunday afternoon, I went with friends to a local church where the massed choirs of Cal State Long Beach performed a festival of Christmas music that was superb, and afterwards twelve of us went out for dinner.
So far so good, right?
Monday morning I had to take my female greyhound, Annie, to the vet for x-rays to find out why she’s losing so much weight. Answer: She has cancer. Fast-growing, the vet says, giving her between one to three months. She’s nine years old (an old nine, the vet says, thanks to her hard life at the track before she came to live with me), and chemo and surgery and all the rest would be very stressful with no guarantees of good outcome. So I decided not to put her through that, but to keep her comfortable till the time comes. It impressed me as a good solution on Monday.
But now it’s Wednesday, and I look at her - my sweet little black girl with white tips to her tail and toes - and it doesn’t seem so great. Yes, I’ve been through this before with other dogs - cats too - but it never gets any easier. I think Jack, my other grey knows; he’s going to miss her as much as I will. I feel irritable and distracted, unable to work right now. Not in the Christmas mood at all.
Maybe Elvis was right after all?
The Christmas puddings are made, the cards are starting to arrive. The lights are up outside, and I’ve put up a few favorite decorations. On Saturday, my best friend and I had lunch at our favorite Indian restaurant, then went to see the Long Beach Shakespeare Company perform Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” which was delightful. Sunday afternoon, I went with friends to a local church where the massed choirs of Cal State Long Beach performed a festival of Christmas music that was superb, and afterwards twelve of us went out for dinner.
So far so good, right?
Monday morning I had to take my female greyhound, Annie, to the vet for x-rays to find out why she’s losing so much weight. Answer: She has cancer. Fast-growing, the vet says, giving her between one to three months. She’s nine years old (an old nine, the vet says, thanks to her hard life at the track before she came to live with me), and chemo and surgery and all the rest would be very stressful with no guarantees of good outcome. So I decided not to put her through that, but to keep her comfortable till the time comes. It impressed me as a good solution on Monday.
But now it’s Wednesday, and I look at her - my sweet little black girl with white tips to her tail and toes - and it doesn’t seem so great. Yes, I’ve been through this before with other dogs - cats too - but it never gets any easier. I think Jack, my other grey knows; he’s going to miss her as much as I will. I feel irritable and distracted, unable to work right now. Not in the Christmas mood at all.
Maybe Elvis was right after all?