"You'll just know."

I've never watched someone I love die. 

It's almost happened, but not quite.

I was supposed to visit my grandmother during fall break when she was in the hospital after complications due to her Alzheimer's. Instead, I ended up studying over  break after my mother told me not to go because Nana wouldn't know who I was. It turns out, she died the day I would have been up there.

I was supposed to go home for Thanksgiving four weeks later, but between my grandmother dying and Thanksgiving I got pneumonia and missed a week of school. So I stayed away and studied. My Mom woke up the morning of Thanksgiving and found our family dog, Sandy, dead on the floor. She had congestive heart failure.

I felt somehow disconnected from the deaths because I wasn't there. Similarly, when I was 16, both of my father's parents and a great aunt died in a car accident in North Carolina. See? Disconnected. 

I've been a support system for other people who have lost their loved ones. My favorite sister-in-law lost her father to lung cancer. She picked up the phone and asked for some help to give her Mom a break, MacTroll and I responded and headed out to Baltimore. 

My good friend womanthatrolls lost her father when we were in college. It was terrifying to know there was absolutely no comfort that I could offer her besides sitting on my bed and playing with her hair.

The first semester of college, KTDID lost her uncle. I drove her back to Peoria and went to the funeral. She sat silently in the passenger seat staring out the window of the car between bouts of sobbing. 

I don't believe in God. I don't believe in Heaven. I don't believe there's any kind of plan or order to life. I believe in chaos, which provides no comfort. I believe that if you send out good into the world, someone will eventually benefit from it -- but it probably won't be you. I've known too many shitty things that have happened to really, really good people to believe karma is about the individual.

This week has been a messy week. I've taken a lot of hits and made some important decisions. I started my Monday by vomiting, followed by a flat tire and a bloody nose. It snowed five inches the day of an early class, which was a pain in the ass. I have had a nasty headcold all week, which has made life very unpleasant and robbed me of a lot of energy. My husband has been home 36-48 hours at a time for the last three weeks. And this morning, my 19-year-old cat went to the vet. She's lethargic and sad. 

Tests yesterday show she has a severe urinary tract infection, two kidney stones (one which has passed from the kidney to the bladder) which threw her already crappy  kidneys into failure, which has screwed with her liver and her hyperthyroidism. Plus, she threw up twice the night before last and is dehydrated and constipated. 

We're treating what we can right now with IV fluids, anti-nausea medication and kick ass antibiotics. But the only movement Looseyfur has made is walking the 10 feet from her carrier last night (she stayed in it all day with the door open) to our bed. We carried her to her litterbox both times to pee. They're going to monitor her today until the thyroid numbers come back from the lab. 

What we're looking at is either a cat that's going to use another one of her 9 lives and come back from near death--again-- or a cat who is going into complete organ failure and won't come home with us tonight. X-man, Riley and I said goodbye this morning, just in case. If she goes, she'll be cremated and sprinkled in our yard this spring.

We've been through a lot over the past 10 1/2 years with Looseyfur. She was our first baby. The first decision, after signing a lease on our first apartment in Virginia, that MacTroll and I made together. We had Loosey before we had furniture, before we had actual store bought dishes. She's welcomed 4 other cats, a dog and a baby into our house. 

She's usually full of vigor, but today she can hardly meow.