I’m sorry for your losses, @KaY_Jelly, all of them. If it’s significant to you, then it’s significant, no?
I have a friend in Virginia who has had two Scottie dogs for about a dozen years or so. Has had. He lost one to cancer a week ago, but he had known about that and made the dog as comfortable as possible while his end approached. But he worried about the other, too, because she was obviously not doing well; she hasn’t been eating lately. He found out today that her liver has failed – also cancer, unsuspected til now – and if he doesn’t put her down tomorrow then I’ll be very surprised. Losing a beloved pet can be hugely upsetting.
My father died two days before my 50th birthday, ten years ago. He was 80 at the time, but in generally good health, so his death came as a complete shock. The following week I went to Flagstaff, AZ, where he and my mother had moved only months earlier (to be near a sister who planned to help out with their day to day needs in a way that none of the other siblings could). I was there that week to spend time with my mother as we eased her into a nursing home, since she needed full care. I learned that Dad had died on the night he put the trash out to the curb. I suspect (as I learned myself during the week I stayed in the house and put the trash out myself) that the full container, a wheelie-bin, had been hard going for him in the loose pea gravel driveway. But would he ask for help taking out the trash? Not on your life; not on his life, anyway. The physical effort in the cold at high altitude, I think, plus his always-low blood pressure, probably made him dizzy. He probably passed out or fainted, fell, hit his head and died from the combination of fall and exposure as he lay outside in the cold all night. (Mom just sat in her chair in the living room; she’d been incompetent to call for help – or even to recognize that help might be needed – for many months by this time.) So the joke I discovered that week – through my tears – was that Dad was killed while taking out the trash. The trash took out Dad. Some day I suppose it’ll be funnier.
I can’t wait to find out what happens next.