My old dog woke me up this morning. The sad part is, it wasn’t because he needed to go out. No, no, instead he sat in his crate and flapped his head around until his ears made this noise that sounded like my grandmother was standing right next to my head, flapping out the sheets in the breeze so that the folds would be nice and crisp and the sheets wouldn’t get wrinkled.
I groaned and called him over to me when I realized that he had yet more ear infections and scratched his ears for him until he settled down. Then I tried to go back to sleep, but of course, it didn’t happen.
I couldn’t sleep because for some reason, it occurred to me that my brother told me that my grandmother’s dog had passed away the other day. My grandmother and grandfather got that dog a month or so before I came home for the first visit from Spokane. I think that Grandma got her because my heart dog, Duchess, passed away a month after I moved here. I’m pretty sure Grandma’s reasoning was that she didn’t want me to come home and not see a dog in the yard.
Snuggles wasn’t my dog, and she wasn’t really my grandmother’s dog either, but she was as sweet as she could be and lived a good long life. I hope Duchess and Beau and Emily keep her company at Rainbow Bridge.
The funny thing about all this is that my brother told me about this some time last week, and it didn’t really sink in until this morning. My mind has been that way lately, it’s like things just sit on the surface and gradually sink deeper and deeper until all the sudden, they hit terminal velocity and smack me in the face.
A friend of mine told me several weeks ago that his mother isn’t doing well, that diabetes is crippling her memory and that she can either have this surgery performed, or live another two years. I completely forgot that he said anything until his wife said something to me again, and then I went to say “Man, that stinks.” and he told me that he could have sworn that he’d already mentioned it.
It’s making me feel like the one who’s getting old isn’t the dog, it’s me.. and I’m contracting Alzheimer’s.
The scariest part about it is that my great-aunt, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, passed away a month or two ago. I have a completely different blog post about that… but I do have to wonder if my memory is starting to go because I haven’t been drinking enough coffee lately or something.
*sigh* Weirdness is…
