Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Poem for Tuesday and Rosie

Rise From Sleep
By Kobayashi Issa

Rise from sleep, old cat,
And with great yawns and stretchings
Amble out for love

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We had to say goodbye to Rosie today. Since Adam had no school because of the ice storm and Paul was working from home, we took her to a local vet who said that based on her x-rays, he thought we were better off having exploratory surgery to see whether what looked like a tumor was in fact a calcium deposit or something that could be removed, rather than spend a lot of time and money on ultrasounds and treatments that wouldn't treat her discomfort if she had a malignant growth. He sent us to an internal specialist in Urbana (great doctor, great staff) who let us spend some time with her after the IV was in, then started the surgery and discovered that she had metastasized cancer. We all agreed that the kindest thing was to let her go.


Rosie in 2001 along with a stuffed namesake belonging to Daniel


Playing GameBoy with Daniel


In a bag with Adam


Helping Paul read


Helping me string beads


Rosie's last photo, with Adam at the vet

Delta, who had also had a sad day, came up for dinner, which was a really lovely break from being upset. We ordered pizza and watched assorted documentary bits about filmmaking and let Cinnamon and Daisy climb on us. By the time she headed home, the neighborhood was shrouded in fog and we had multiple warnings about snow for the morning. Adam has an early doctor's appointment, then is supposed to get a photo award from the Maryland Comptroller, assuming the school building where it's supposed to take place is open -- several local school districts have already closed for Tuesday, though our county didn't decide about Monday until 5 a.m. that morning. So once again I am going to go collapse.

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