Blu's Final Resting Place / Hearing Leann Sing
The Monday morning after Blu died three-ish weeks ago, we took his body to the local humane society, the Bonnie L. Hays Animal Shelter, and paid $90 to have him cremated, just as we've done for pets we've had in the past. We expected that within a week or two, we'd hear back about being able to pick up his ashes so we could bury him under a tree in our backyard. All this time has passed and I finally decided to ask my father what's taken so long to get Blu back. What he had to say makes me kind of sick. With a sigh, he slowly explained that he'd called them a week after we dropped the body off and inquired as to how things were going and when we'd be able to pick the ashes up. The lady on the other end of the line seemed puzzled. She said they no longer did private cremations and haven't in years.
My father said the reality of that statement came home all to quickly. If they don't do private cremations, that means they load up their furnace until it's full with all manner of other people's pets, euthanized pound animals and possibly even road kill scooped up by animal control or police. They light it all up and the ashes unceremoniously end up at the landfill. When we turned over $90 and the remains of our dearly departed, no one said anything about not returning ashes to us. My father, disturbed and beside himself, couldn't finish the conversation with the greedy psychopaths at the humane society ($90? Really? You need $90 for every animal you just dump in a pit and light up?), so all he could do was hang up on her. That was two weeks ago. All that effort to save the animal -- all that money and all that pain and struggle -- and we truly now have absolutely nothing to show for it. We have nothing to bury or say a proper goodbye to. Blu is never coming home. I feel even more like we let him down. We couldn't save him and now we can't bury him. Lost, now, he truly is to us.
When my brother and I found this all out, our first reaction was to retaliate against the shelter somehow. Maybe we'd call them up and complain and demand our money back or to give us more information as if we'd spend a day at the dump digging around. My dad said to just leave it all be. Nothing we can do now will change reality and will only make it hurt more. So we are all trying, as best we can, to let go. Completely.
New Year's Eve was a busy one for me. The highlight was spending a majority of the evening at a party with Leann. Between games of Apples to Apples and swapping cameras around to get revelry photos, we got to play Rock Band together. With me on the drums and Leann on the microphone, I finally got the chance to hear her sing. I was so distracted trying to enjoy her voice that I barely played the drums and really didn't seriously make an effort to win the game for the team. We had a lot of fun that night and it was a playful happy time. Saturday night, we went out again for dinner and a movie (But don't call it a date!) and to exchange our Christmas gifts. She gave me a handful of homemade fridge magnets with little pictures glued behind a small piece of convex glass which magnified the image. They're really fun and personal tokens. It means a lot that it was made just for me and she she put thought into the images. For my gift to her, I mounted and framed a 14-inch by 11-inch lithograph sold by Disney of a scene from one of Leann's favorite movies, "Lilo and Stitch." It's one of my favorite movies too! Who doesn't love it? Here's a photo of the final product before I gave it to her:
Isn't it cool? I'm very happy with how it turned out and I'm thrilled that I've given her something she can hang on her wall forever as a true piece of custom, one of a kind Disney artwork. Happy New Year everyone!
My father said the reality of that statement came home all to quickly. If they don't do private cremations, that means they load up their furnace until it's full with all manner of other people's pets, euthanized pound animals and possibly even road kill scooped up by animal control or police. They light it all up and the ashes unceremoniously end up at the landfill. When we turned over $90 and the remains of our dearly departed, no one said anything about not returning ashes to us. My father, disturbed and beside himself, couldn't finish the conversation with the greedy psychopaths at the humane society ($90? Really? You need $90 for every animal you just dump in a pit and light up?), so all he could do was hang up on her. That was two weeks ago. All that effort to save the animal -- all that money and all that pain and struggle -- and we truly now have absolutely nothing to show for it. We have nothing to bury or say a proper goodbye to. Blu is never coming home. I feel even more like we let him down. We couldn't save him and now we can't bury him. Lost, now, he truly is to us.
When my brother and I found this all out, our first reaction was to retaliate against the shelter somehow. Maybe we'd call them up and complain and demand our money back or to give us more information as if we'd spend a day at the dump digging around. My dad said to just leave it all be. Nothing we can do now will change reality and will only make it hurt more. So we are all trying, as best we can, to let go. Completely.
New Year's Eve was a busy one for me. The highlight was spending a majority of the evening at a party with Leann. Between games of Apples to Apples and swapping cameras around to get revelry photos, we got to play Rock Band together. With me on the drums and Leann on the microphone, I finally got the chance to hear her sing. I was so distracted trying to enjoy her voice that I barely played the drums and really didn't seriously make an effort to win the game for the team. We had a lot of fun that night and it was a playful happy time. Saturday night, we went out again for dinner and a movie (But don't call it a date!) and to exchange our Christmas gifts. She gave me a handful of homemade fridge magnets with little pictures glued behind a small piece of convex glass which magnified the image. They're really fun and personal tokens. It means a lot that it was made just for me and she she put thought into the images. For my gift to her, I mounted and framed a 14-inch by 11-inch lithograph sold by Disney of a scene from one of Leann's favorite movies, "Lilo and Stitch." It's one of my favorite movies too! Who doesn't love it? Here's a photo of the final product before I gave it to her:
Isn't it cool? I'm very happy with how it turned out and I'm thrilled that I've given her something she can hang on her wall forever as a true piece of custom, one of a kind Disney artwork. Happy New Year everyone!