Powders and Pills

Dearest Rachel –

I say this a lot these days, especially in these letters to you, but today I’m doing something I really never expected I would need to do. I’m picking up more medicine for Chompers.

Granted, it’s not a prescription medicine or anything like that. Just some powdered distilled from cranberries in order to promote urinary tract health. It’s actually hard to come by; I had to have the Barkery order it special for me, and they just called last evening to let me know when it arrived.

When I first got this stuff, I was fairly convinced that I would wind up wasting the better part of this container. After all, 300 doses? That’s 150 days (since the instructions talk about including a scoop of the stuff in his food twice a day); that’s like five months! There was no way he’d last that long, especially with me taking care of him rather than you.

And yet, he’s still here with us. Now, I’m not about to pat myself on the back in congratulation for keeping him alive. I dare say that’s solely on him. I’m constantly being told that I’ll know when it’s time, and from the descriptions I’ve been given, it isn’t time yet. The old boy still eats (greedily), he still eliminates – although he does tend to do so in his sleep from time to time, which is annoying, but doesn’t seem worthy of a death sentence. I’ve promised myself (and Daniel) that we will be getting the carpet replaced (which we never did from the time we purchased the house) once he finally passes on. So whatever Chompers might do to it is only temporary, anyway.

Just another couple of rooms to completely remodel, now that everything else has changed, or will soon enough.

But in the meantime, I’m going to continue to do what I can to keep Chompers as healthy as I can under the circumstances. And so, whenever I leave the office this afternoon (and it should be early because I do need to get myself changed and what have you for VBS), I’ve got to make sure to stop by the Barkery and pick this up. If nothing else, it’s been paid for already when I placed the order.

I do hope you’re not getting impatient waiting for him by the Rainbow Bridge. I would like to think you’ve got plenty to do up there, lots of people to meet and talk to, so that it doesn’t bother you that Chompers isn’t there yet, despite the fact that you were expecting him months ago.

I can’t guarantee that his last few months will be as pleasant as they were when you were still here, especially since it’s always getting that much harder for him to drag himself around – and yes, a lot of people have told me that his quality of life is declining to the point where I really ought to do something about that, but I’m just not sure. For now, I’m erring on the side of life for now. Just like all of us, he’ll have an eternity to be dead; he only has so much time to be alive. I’m going to give him as much time as I can, and if that requires a scoop of this stuff on every meal that I serve him from now on, well, so be it.

Wish me luck, honey; I’m going to need it.