Huckleberry Died

He died in the night on Friday.  I had one of my paranoid wake-ups around 1 am and reached over to feel his belly for breathing.  I couldn´t feel anything, so I jiggled him a little.  He didn´t lift his head or squeak so I unwrapped him from the sweatshirt I had him in and put my ear to his chest.  There wasn´t any sound or movement.  I wrapped him up in a sweater and called my mom.

My family helped me bury him in the garden the next morning.  They´ve been very nice to me, though they find me strange for being so sad and for all the effort I put into Huckleberry this week.  That´s just not how things are done here. 

This was the first time they´d seen me cry.  I haven´t been too leaky since I´ve been at site.  I cried once when I was too sick to move, another time while watching WALL-E (at the end when the robots hold hands and WALL-E comes back), and a few other times, but never in front of my family.  I started to cry this morning while brushing my teeth, and I´ve found that they are mutually exclusive activites.  My family gave me lots of hugs and pats and sympathetic looks.  It was nice of them to support me even though they might not get it. 

It´s so strange that I only had Huckleberry for a week.  I was already used to fixing two breakfasts and sharing the pillow.  I keep expecting to see him wagging in the yard or curled up on my sleeping bag.  It´s odd to be alone in my room again. 

As sad as I am that he died, there´s relief in it as well.  I was grinding myself into the ground trying to take care of him.  I´m a bit thinner, much more tired, and have more forehead wrinkles than previously.  I´m glad he´s not suffering anymore.

I started to think that he would go on Friday.  It was a hard thought to accept.  But he could barely walk anymore, he was getting progressively colder and weaker, and he´d do a strange head-shake.  Before I went to sleep that night, I watched Huckleberry´s jerky breathing for a while by my headlamp light and waited for it to stop. 

My family is on a campaign to get me a new puppy so I won´t be sad anymore.  It´s taken a lot of doing to convince them that I´m not ready and it won´t make me feel all better.  I´ll try again eventually, but it´s time for a break.

It´s funny that I wanted a dog so badly, then my family found Huckleberry, then he went so quickly.  I´m going to suss out the deeper meaning of that for myself when I´m not so exhausted. 

I was really excited for Huckleberry to be my dog.  He was a good boy.  It´s a shame he couldn´t have stayed longer.