Aching Reality

It is pure anguish, witnessing the agonizingly
unstoppable diminishment of the life force
in a beloved animal companion, one with whom
near two decades of living has been shared. All
things do end, but it is the pain of the implacable
descent into non-being that compels us to grieve,
hoping for a miraculous respite that will allow
us more of her before her live evaporates.

Small, black, the hairy little creature still
cognizant of life's allures, vigorously applying
her energy to wooded trails and the irresistible
odours of a natural environment found there.
But of the energy, too much is invested in a
nervous inability to relax the tensions of
uncertainty that now beset her every waking
moment. And they are too plentiful, those wakeful
times of endless, purposeless, confused pacing.

Forgotten now her faultless sense of direction
and memory, as she stands adrift in her mind, her
landscape newly strange, routine now disrupted,
discarded in the new discordance of her failing
sensibilities. She has become a tautly-wired,
tightly-bound, fully lost shadow of her former
self, anticipating danger where none exists, startled
by imagined threats looming suddenly before her;
inaudible sounds and sights undecipherable by us.

Her once-peerless sight and hearing have
steadily faded, imperilling her confidence. She
looks, transfixed, at scenes known only to her
imagination and not a function of clear vision.
No longer capable of reacting to our familiar voices,
reassurance now lies in physical contact, and
these she shrinks from, then softly relents. Her
haircoat, too long now, and disordered, reflecting
the miasma of her mind. Resistant to brush
and bath. Forgotten her extensive vocabulary
and communication skills, she wanders listlessly,
restively, throughout the rooms of the house
that has ever been her home, and ours.

We entice, then order her to sleep, wait by
her side until exhaustion all too briefly rescues
her from alert dissonance and the energy-sapping
wakefulness she experiences. We are resigned
to entreating her to consume her food, submitting
now to offerings to pique her failing interest, as
she paces restlessly by and beyond her food bowl
as though unaware of its purpose. In the early
morning hours, she leaves her bed and paces
about and around, lost in her fog of confusion.

She will eliminate as needed, but amazingly
sparingly, an obvious symptom of growing
bodily dysfunctionality and mental unawareness.
She is in no measure as she once, even fairly
of late, has been. Already we sorrow, in no state
of mind ourselves to recognize death's
jurisdiction, its implacable imperative over
a life long lived and happily shared.