ok, ok

So I was off.  I was actually starting Week 9 and had finished Week 8 prior to the life and death crisis.  I have finally started up again and am on the Week 9, and yet there is another life and death crisis, only this time with my dog.

Stewie has been with us through a lot of things.  Through the death of Charlie, all of our adoptions, through two runs to the hospital on emergency flights, and through one that was a routine but scary operation on our child.  He has so much love for everyone and it seems so unfair that he is reaped so soon.  He is barely 7 and has a hemangiosarcoma on his big heart.

You might think it could be worse, and you are right, it could be.  I will not even tempt fate by making a list, but I will say that this sucks.  I have always hoped that our dogs would pass of old age making the death talk to my children so much easier if they were nearer to double digits.  And I would think that having a long life would make that stage of pain and grief that much further away easier to palate.  What it has done is mellowed me.  I feel a lot when I do feel and I am struggling with the guilt almost the most.  I have not always treated Stewie with as much kindness as he deserves.  He loves so much and it can be hard to handle.  He is impulsive and wrecks so much around him.  But he loves so unabashedly, it shames me.

I am not one to hold on to too much regret.  I am a firm believer that what we have done in our past leads to where we are and a change in that past would not lead us to who we are now.  I do regret treating him so poorly.  My heart aches for you, my friend.  I wish I could change it for you.  And I know you will still love me in my failure, much to my shame.