August Passing

Two nights ago I lay in bed wrapped in fluffy cream lacy blankets beside my best furry buddy Gustav Snuffaluphagus Austin. He had his head on my pillow as always and snored like a grown man. I smiled. Yeah, he takes up way too much room in the bed and on occasion offers up biological warfare, but the amount of help he is to me is indescribable.

With my major issues with sleep he allows me to close my eyes and rest knowing full well I’m being watched over. That is an incredible help that if it were absent I’d .. well, I’d not sleep much. His presence assures me that no one has entered the room uninvited.  If there’s a knock at the door I and all my neighbors know about it. Gus is this type of alarm that lets me abandon my fears, close my eyes and sleep. I just don’t know that I could manage fears of my mother coming back without him. I can rationalize that my mother is not standing there because Gus isn’t going off. Yes, it feels like she’s standing there a but with Gus in the house it’s just not possible. Many nights, such as last night, I’ve depended upon this reasoning.

Last night I lay listening to him nearly break the sound barrier when this great sadness hit me. It’ll be one year next month that my first bestest buddy Captain Crunch “The Kid” passed. What a gift he was. Despite my brief stay in the hospital after his death, I can say I’ve handled his passing quite well, better than I thought I would. I think Gus has a lot to do with that too. I still think Captain’s death has me a bit paranoid about Gus though. Right now Gus has a hotspot on his nose. Those things are awful. They start out small but within 30 min a hotspot can increase by more than 20 times it’s original size. You gotta get control of those things quickly. They hurt like nobody’s business too so when Gus’ nose looked half eaten off I about freaked. It’s not the first time I thought about losing him. I mean, I know he won’t die from this hotspot but there have been times I thought about his death and shuttered.

When Gus is sleeping soundly I catch myself checking to see if his lungs are expanding. When he’s outside playing with a stick the visual of Captain getting a stick rammed in the roof of his mouth flies through my head. I fear the loss of Gus even though I know he’s young, strong and healthy I fear losing him. The good thing is I worry as much as I enjoy and  I fear as much as I love.

August 8th Gus will turn two years old, on  August 19th it’ll be one full year since I last pet Captain’s head. On the 19th Gus and I will have to do something special. Also, I’ve got a story called “The Alpha Kiss” that I’ve been working on concerning Captain passing the torch to Gus. I hope to have that completed by his anniversary. I wrote “The Alpha Kiss” when Captain first got sick but have since made some changes to the ending. Instead of a sunflower to commemorate Captain I wanted a rose bush but I’m good at killing them so I thought of an aloe vera plant. I can keep those alive plus I use to buy them for Captain so I could add an aloe tincture to his bath water. So, in August I’ll snatch up a large aloe plant from the same store I purchased them for 8 years and sit it on my table by the sunlight. It’s the same old worn out table Gus lays under and I paint at. I think it’s the perfect spot.

Joan of Arc