A Rough Weekend

***Disclaimer***
If you're not up for a rambling, pitiful post you might want to skip this one!

First of all, let me say THANK YOU to all who were praying for our family this past weekend, and for each comment you left here on my blog. I read and cried through every one of them repeatedly! It's amazing how much love and compassion is to be found among friends, especially in God's Church. And over a dog. I can't begin to tell you how much your comments and prayers meant to me. Thank you so much.

Friday night. We got the call from our neighbor at about 6:00, I think, that he had found Hershey. After I got him home I worked at getting him cleaned up and inspecting his injuries, then the kids were able to see him and pray for him for a few minutes. We prayed and cried and called family for prayer and all of that stuff. It wasn't until nearly an hour later when I determined that Hershey's back was broken, or spinal cord damaged or whatever. That was heartbreaking in itself, but he really didn't appear to have any pain at all. We prayed and cried even harder. I started to leave the room to go to the restroom, fully prepared to come back and stay and lay with him throughout the night. James says Hershey lifted his head and watched me walk out of the room, then laid down and stopped breathing. I was barely two steps into the other room when James called me to come back. I know it sounds nutty, but I really think he just didn't want to die while I was there. Is that crazy? Maybe, but I believe it. Dogs are so amazing. In fact, the only reason the neighbor even found Hershey is because of one of his dogs. He got home from work and one of his dalmations came and greeted him, then followed him all over the house crying and whining and just wouldn't stop. He finally got up and she led him to the front door, so he let her outside. She ran over to where Hershey was laying and sat by him and just cried and whined until the man got a flashlight to see what was the matter. Amazing. I'm a firm believer of the "man's best friend" thing.

Anyway, we decided it would be best to go ahead and tell the kids instead of waiting until morning. It was so awful! Katie and Joe were just a wreck--I've never seen them cry so hard. It was difficult to even keep them under control, but we prayed together and talked and cried for a while and they finally calmed down a little bit.

James and I worked on cleaning up all of the mess and putting away Hershey's dishes and things like that. Seemed like it would be easier if the kids didn't wake up and see dog things all around the house in the morning. James built the prettiest little coffin a dog could ask for and we dug a hole in the back yard, then I blogged. I knew that sleep wouldn't come easily, so I stayed up and painted and cried until sometime after 2:00. I had started painting our walk-in closet that day and it seemed best to just finish it up. It needed done and I needed the distraction.

The next morning I woke up to Joe standing next to my bed crying. So we laid in bed and cried a while. The kids had breakfast and I put a quick coat of poly on the now red shelves in the closet. Then we bundled up and went outside in the new fallen snow for Hershey's little funeral. At first Joe said he didn't even want to see the box--just couldn't handle it. But then he decided that we needed to have a funeral for Hershey and that he needed to be there. Katie talked about how much she loved Hershey and I told the kids how God wants us to cast our cares upon Him because He cares for us. We talked about how much God loves us and how He cares about the things that we care about. Then we all prayed together and thanked God for letting us have Hershey Dog and enjoy him for these years; and for all of the mercy He showed even in Hershey's death. James took the shovel and buried him, then surrounded the grave with the big rocks we'd dug out of the hole the night before, and pounded the cross into the ground. It's a pretty little grave, but it makes me cry every time I walk out the back door and see it!

We came inside and loaded up to go to one of our member's 80th birthday party. Joe had a horrible day, thinking about Hershey and crying off and on all day. It broke my heart and I cried with him every time! We cried in the car, we cried at Sam's Club, we cried at the party, and afterward at Albertson's, and of course we cried when we walked into to a cold, empty, quiet house with nobody here to greet us and be excited that we came home... ~sigh~ Joe just had such a hard time with all of it. I feel like I've learned so much more about my kids through all of this. Katie cried lots on Friday night, then spent the hour before Hershey died drawing pictures of herself with Hershey and writing how much they loved each other. She cried at the "funeral" too, but has pretty much been okay since then. Her personality feels things very deeply, but also very quickly! I think she's pretty well recovered. Joe, true to his nature, said he wished that he would have died instead of Hershey Dog. He has cried more tears than I would have thought his body could produce. And he has talked about Hershey a lot--needs to talk it out to get through it, just like me. Sam acted distant and untouched for a while, even mean and careless about it sometimes. But he broke down and cried real hard on Friday night. I sat down with him on Saturday and told him that God made everybody different; some people cry a lot over things like this and some people, like his Dad, just don't. I told him it's okay if he's not the kind of person to cry a lot; that it doesn't mean that he loved Hershey any less than the rest of us. He started bawling then! I wasn't prepared for that, but since then he's been better about the situation so I guess it was a good thing. By the way, James did cry. ;-) He says it was because the kids and I were taking it so hard, but I happen to know that a few of those tears were because of his own personal love for Hershey Dog! And he says that there's a big hole here now. You can just feel that something is missing here at the house. There's an emptiness and we all hate it!

All of the kids did much, much better yesterday. Joe only broke down and cried two or three times. But I was a wreck!!! I just felt sooooo exhausted and wiped out, and sooooo emotional. I felt like I just cried all day long. It seemed like I had spent all of my energy helping the kids get through this and now that they were doing better it was finally sinking in to me and I was feeling the loss. After church all I really wanted to do was come home and take a nap. But I didn't want to take a nap. Not without a poodle curled up in the crook behind my knees, resting his head on my leg. (It was one of his favorite things.) It's amazing how many silly things make you think about a dog after he's gone! I did lay down, but I just cried and cried and couldn't stop. How dumb is it to cry yourself to sleep over a dog??? I don't know, but that's what I did. I finally fell asleep at some point, and I actually felt much better after my nap. More rational and not quite so emotional.

Today has been a much better day and I've felt a better sense of balance over everything. I've cried a lot, but I have the sense that life will go on and we will eventually get over this. I've really been surprised at how hard this has been for me. I always told myself that Hershey "wasn't Rusty," the dog I had from the time I was 8 until I was 23. I never imagined it would be so hard to say goodbye to Hershey, but I'm sure I'm taking this as hard as when I lost Rusty! That little rat had wormed his way pretty deeply into my heart and I miss him so much! I've been able to function better and got a lot of things done today, but I did take a couple of breaks to go sit on the porch and cry for a few minutes here and there. And it's amazing all of the things that make you think of a dog once he's gone. I cried when I opened the dryer door and that dippy sweater of Hershey's tumbled out. I cried when I washed up his dog dishes and put his leash away. I cried when James dropped a piece of food on the floor and I instinctively wanted to holler, "Oh, Hershey Dog...!" and have him run into the kitchen to assume his happy duty of floor-cleaner-upper. ~sigh~ It's so lonely without him here!

I warned you this would be long and pitiful! I think I'm going to sit down with the kids in the next few days and make a list of the things we always want to remember about Hershey Dog. He really was a good dog. Even though he had his quirks. And even though he ate part of my pie crust at Thanksgiving time and I was ready to kill him. ~sigh~ I'd bake him a pie of his own if I could have him back! But God knows best. I keep telling myself that.

Ah, yes. As awful as this has been, I feel like God has answered our prayers and we have truly seen His love and mercy in this situation. It still just blows my mind that God loves us so much that He arranged for Hershey to be able to be here with us, by a hot, crackling fire (his favorite spot), being taken care of and loved when he died. For all practical purposes, he should have died alone in the cold. But God cares about us enough that He didn't let that happen. He cares enough that Hershey did minimal suffering. He cares enough that he didn't live through the night, or even long enough for the feeling to return and him experience great pain. He cares enough that he let Hershey die quickly and peacefully instead of living through the experience and being paralyzed and not able to walk--and the terrible decision we would have had to make at that point. Everything about it is just so loving and merciful. Little things that perhaps seem crazy to non-dog people (!), but to me they just display how very loving and merciful God is; how special we are to him that He takes such care and concern even with how our dog dies. I feel so, so, so blessed. We've talked about all of that a lot and the kids, after a while, have begun to see and be thankful for those things as well. There's a much longer list of the goodness of God in this situation, but I can't seem to recall the rest right now.

~whew~ Did anybody actually stick through that entire post about a dog most of you never knew?! I didn't blog it as much for you as I did for me. This is my "diary" of sorts and I want to remember how much we loved that crazy dog and even how much we miss him right now. And I certainly want to remember the lessons that God is teaching all of us through this. I'll try real hard to have something else to blog about next time. ;-) Again, thank you all for your love, your comments, and your prayers. I appreciate them all so very much. You're the best!!!