because normal is anything but...

in the easy life, one's dog doesn't always die a quiet, peaceful death after living a nice long life consisting of beloved car rides, chasing mourning doves and snoring on the couch without a care in the world. no...because nothing is "normal" in this particular life that leads me from one day to the next. here, my dog dies at barely one year old, sprawled out on the garage floor, strewn garbage around her, with her head stuffed as far as she could get it into an empty beef jerky bag. i so completely shit you not. i'll fill you in on the story, as sad as it is, rather quickly as the easy life waits for no one and i have out of town guests due to arrive in approximately 6 hours. i have a million things on my mental to-do list...the least of which is picking up approximately 5 cat food laced horks that are scattered about my house in neat little mushy shit-looking piles. on my carpet, of course - easy life cats never urp on the tile. got home from isabella yesterday around noon-thirty after picking up the kids from their dad's house. go to back my car into the garage, as i have a ton of shit to unload, and see two of the three dogs run out into the driveway in a happy slobbering greeting. hmmm...big surprise, lucy seems to be busy in the garage eating something. lucy is ALWAYS busy eating something. she lives her life to eat. she is the top scrounge in a world of really scroungy things. i jokingly ask the kids, myself, whomever if she's freakin dead or what - pup better move, cause mama's backing up. nope, pup doesn't move. pup is definitely otherwise engaged. oh look at that, pup has her head stuffed into a bag of jerky. what the fuck, over? it seems that pup has forsaken her very life for what may or may not have been a sliver of beef jerky left in the bag. she is in a sort of crouched down position, legs sprawled in all four directions and she just looks like she just fell asleep while munching away on a delectable, forbidden treat that she, and she alone, managed to discover while rummaging through a bag of garbage that i was in too much of a hurry to toss into the main can last friday on my way out of town. my assumption, after going over and over it in my head, is that she was so intent on cleaning out the bag that she was unaware of the carbon monoxide building up in her little scavenger lungs. maybe thinking "hmmm...this was truly delicious, i'm feeling a bit like a little nap right now. oh yea...right here, right noww-zzzzzzzzz..." pup is now and forever running through the fields of doggie heaven, where pups get to eat whatever and however much they want to. i sure hope pup is fucking happy and oblivious to the mess in my back seat of my car that is my daughter. there is nothing i can do to help my child. she sobs. and sobs. she wraps herself around me as tight as she can and gasps out things like "i just never thought she'd die so soon." and "mom, do you think God will let her eat jerky in Heaven?" i vaguely hear jonsie saying to me, "uhm, mom...i think that was my jerky bag." omg. this isn't really happening, is it? because the way i deal with death seems to be running from it, i simply close the garage door, gather up my child and take her into the house where we rock back and forth and cry. disneyland dad has been summoned, because if nothing else, he is awesome in a pinch that involves a stiff and his near-hysterical daughter. he arrives in tears feeling that if he had only gone back to pick lucy up the night before... they had taken her to the dog-park sunday afternoon and brought her back to the house so they could go for a swim and not have to leave her in the apartment by herself. the plan was to return before dinner and take her back with them. but, starving and exhausted from swimming, they later decide that they would just leave her at the house to play with the other two dogs as ms b would be back home by noon the next day. it's all good. to wrap up this really really sad story, the girl insisted on keeping a sleepover date with her friend alysha because, in her words, "...i think i really need to be distracted, mom." omgomgomg. my heart is just shattering into a million pieces for this child. upon my return from delivering her to her friend's house, i discover that mike, with the help of brader, has already buried lucy with her baby, her bone and her ball out by the pool - it becomes my understanding that braden had to convince him that burying the jerky bag with her was NOT "the right thing to do". thank you God that this man is the father of my children. he has built a crude marker to put by the grave and we go out to say our last goodbyes to the stupid little dog that gave her life for what i hope was an actual bit of beef jerky. to think that she went through all of that for just a bit of juice is just too sad.