My two companions of 15 and 10 years, respectively, are both, over the course of the last month, now in possession of their rainbow tickets, which is an incredibly banal euphemism a la ‘crossing the rainbow bridge’.
Dana is dying of gut-biome incompetency (stage three, eta two years).
Daka is dying of chronic kidney disease (stage two, eta three years).
I am to pieces. The reality of their needs actively eclipsing my ability to afford them is one thing. The reality that I cannot manage their care without compromising my own is another. The final brad? Merely that I cannot ask another do that which I cannot do myself. Not with any ethic.
I do not get the luxury of drama nor do I really seek it. But I have difficulty expressing my grief without it. All the words and reactions are draped in ‘extra’ I do not need.
I hate that I must ‘stack rank’ the lives of such loving beings in contrast with my own.
I hate that I cannot justify offering them to adoption with special needs knowing they are already in pain; the oscillation in my head around ‘when is appropriate’ turns out to be much more a matter of how much I can plausibly deny in the name of my own selfish desire to have them around.
And of course, on the flip side, the fear that being willing to let them go rather than risk them being in pain I can never know to try and comfort weighs on me. My own fear of seeming aloof and uncaring (a common accusation of this autistic being) genuinely doesn’t care so long as it doesn’t “look bad” and this I find to be a shameful ego thing.
Why is it that I am less concerned with being called ‘uncaring’ for putting them down than being called ‘uncaring’ for keeping them alive?
Am I actually less concerned? It sure doesn’t feel that way.
I feel as if I have two, equally unpleasant choices before me and no matter which I select, it is a fact that I am intervening in the life of another without knowing for sure that it is the mercy I intend (rather than the convenience I most abhor when I see it around me).
I want to not have to make this decision.
I want them to outlive me. Selfish, I know.
Doesn’t matter, this is the reality that we face.
That I face.
I know what must be done. I simply do not want to be the one to do it.
Which, of course, is why I must. It is, I think, part of the responsibility I accepted when I brought them home from rescue. To be as willing to let them go with love as I have been to keep them with me all the years of their life.
Still… were there anyone who could both afford and be willing to adopt them as a pair, I’d let them go that way.
But no one is going to care for them as well as I have; this I know and both my husband and my daughter will attest.
All the same, tonight is D3 and I despair for it… D4.