When you’re at the top, there’s nowhere to go but down. It’s cliché, but true. Your parents were told by their parents were told by their parents before them. And after fourteen years of riding the high, the down came. It came down in three horrible days of pain, of suffering, and of sorrow. Being the first week of September it didn’t come as rain, but if it had rained the effect would be not the enhancement of the emotions, but the cleansing of them.
The first day was the first sign of something very wrong in a very long time. She knew things would go sour some day, and after those many happy years she expected it to come soon. But he hid it from her until that first day. He stopped eating that day, and he wouldn’t drink. She offered him water, and she offered him Gatorade, and he had refused both. He moped around the house, and just lay on the couch, not partaking in activities that generally provided him joy. He wouldn’t play with the cat, and he wouldn’t touch the puppy, though both these animals seemed to sense something was wrong, and wouldn’t really approach him like they usually did. He mostly slept all that day.
On the second day, after he had concerned her for a day, she followed him around, hearing his grunts, and watching his lethargic movements. He seemed indolent in his actions that day, as if it were lead that coursed through his veins, not the blood that was so thin. Or maybe it was the thinning of his blood that made him move more slowly. As if his life was in slow-motion as to afford him the chance to observe the whole day, see it for how normal it truly was. How much like all other days of his life this day was. And most importantly, how special that made it. The day was special because of how normal it was. Everything he did that day was exactly like he did it every other day of his life –save the not eating. And as he did so he reveled in the fact that this was his life.
On that third day, however, she could tell what was happening, and wouldn’t let him spend the day like every other day. She doted on him, following him around. The puppy retreated from the pair, wonted of her love, attention, and reassurance. These things he would not get from her this day, and it scarred him. To think that he would spend his best friend’s last day alone! She felt for the puppy, really she did. But this third day she needed to spend as a conclusion to the fourteen years with him. Hurt as he was, the puppy knew how important this was to her, and he turned to the cat, who wasn’t quite as mean or harsh in his play as he usually was. The cat wasn’t as spirited because he too would lose a best friend this day. He knew it. They all did. And they dealt with it each in his own way.
As the day drew to a close, she could feel him flickering, and she tried to be as helpful and comforting as she could for him. When she found him sitting on the grass she could tell it was drawing near, and she both hated the idea and loved that it provided a way out for him. When it finally happened they were together. He lay on his side, a merciful needle stuck in his leg. She held his head in her hands, giving him her love, support, and compassion until the very last. He looked up at her, and she could see fourteen years of love and devotion, pouring out of him. It spilled from his eyes, and splashed off the table. It ran off onto the floor, and she could feel it rising around her ankles. And soon it had filled the whole room, all the way to the ceiling, and she, she was drowning in it. And he with his relieved sighs, and her with the rivers on her face, were both completely covered, and floated in it, focused only on each other.
