My Life's Just Great; Thanks For Asking!

I haven’t cried in months, sad, but felt the healing. Kirt was cremated, but it’s like I’m the one in the coffin. I can’t get out.  

Bad things happened when Kirt was alive, but we shared our troubles, talked about them before deciding a course of action. He held me in his arms, when things overwhelmed me. It’s all on me and I don’t know what to do.  

The usual problems that plague us all seemed impossible to deal with after he died. I’m getting back to my old form of problem solving. I could handle it, when I had a flat tire on the way to the mechanic to replace the shocks and springs in my rear end. The auto parts store didn’t put the new tires on the front like I wanted. That upset me, but I handled it in a positive manner. I was ready to simply return to the store and speak to the manager without rancor, but my car still needed to go to the mechanic. Three days and more than a thousand dollars later, I picked up my car.

The next morning I enjoyed a ride to Ponce to attend a meeting of animal welfare advocates. The sun came up over the mountains as I cruised to my destination.

As the sun dropped, so did I, for I never found my destination. On the trip home my thoughts were positive. It just wasn’t meant to be. A lovely drive made time for thinking.

When I left at six a.m., the dogs all wanted back in the house. Usually I wouldn’t leave them all in for a long day, but they scurried past me and found napping spots so quickly; they won me over. As I said goodbye, I noticed that Blondie had a cut under one eye, a little swollen and a cut on the opposite rear leg. These dogs hunt, so injuries are common, but it looked like she ran into a pipe or something metal. On our little farm in Illinois I’d seen many types of injuries. I wondered about Blondie’s injury during the day.

About six o’clock, when I got home, Dominic, Lucky, Chi-Ping, Robert Redford, and Smoki streaked out the door. Where was Blondie?

“Blondie, come on good girl; let’s go outside!”

In my bedroom curled at the foot Blondie lay without looking up. Her cheek, swollen to the size of a soft ball, exposed the white of her eye; or has a muscular attachment been severed?

I can only wonder. On Sunday veterinarians, rightfully, charge more money. The worst part is that on Monday I still won’t have the money to pay a vet to look at her. The auto parts store and the mechanic have all my money.

Somebody beat the shit out of Blondie in the middle of the night. She’s lived here without an incident like this most of her nine years, so either it’s one of the new neighbors or a night walker.

From the time we moved to the island, we’d occasionally see a lone man walking down the road in the middle of the night. Things go missing. We felt safe because the dogs protect our long, steep driveway.

     You want to know something funny, ironic, funny?

Since Kirt died, I’ve been sleeping with the doors open. I wanted to die, but didn’t want suicide on my soul, so if someone killed me in the night, it was God’s will. Last night I closed and locked the doors with all of the dogs in the house.