Thank you all, again. I cannot believe how hard last night was--and this day will probably be just as bad. How do you spend these final moments? I'm not even sure. Routine? Sitting and staring? Fussing over someone who would prefer to not be fussed over? Sitting on the internet? :p It's such a surreal series of moments. "Well, I guess I should go pick up poop in case we want to go sit in the yard later..." and "I can't have Dr. Clinch seeing how scrungy my sink is..." and "Gee, I need to scoop the cat boxes before People come over this afternoon." WTF?

Later, there will just be grief...and emptiness...and...that strange sense of "gone". But right now, there's this maelstrom of sadness, doubt, disbelief, confusion, guilt, anger, relief, guilt, uncertainty, and possibly more guilt (Wait, hey, did I mention guilt?) sitting in my stomach.

I KNOW it is the right thing. I know in my head that even if it is "two weeks too early"--which it isn't, but even if it were...that that is far better than even one day, one minute, too late. That making that mistake would leave us with a final memory that is irrevocable, tragic, and needlessly horrible.

But even so, even though the head knows this...sometimes the heart's a little slow to get the memo. (Note to GI JOE: Yo, Joe...knowing may be half the battle, but apparently the other half is considerably more shitty and difficult to reconcile.)

There is a difference between slowing down, between dealing with infirmities and working them into the course of our lives, than there is from that final time when the disease, or age, or whatever it is takes over a life. At some point in the last week, I realized that maybe Sam wasn't living with cancer any more, he was dying with it.

Life should be long--not death. We have, as humans, that beautifully horrible ability to let them go when death is imminent, but hasn't yet robbed them of the final graces of life. It is an awesomely powerful responsibility, and I don't think I've ever before experienced an emotion like this--no matter how many animals I have said goodbye to.

Sam isn't just slowing down. We have lived with and adapted to that for awhile now. And everything before he has bounced back from--and even on his "bad days" there were still moments of good; he was still Sampson.

The breathing issues have been there for awhile now, but in the last five days, they have gotten worse. It's clear he is very uncomfortable, if not in searing pain (being slowly suffocated is not as bad as having your bones explode, but it really isn't the best way to spend your time, either). At night, I can hear his wheezy/panty (hehehehehehe, I said "panty" :p) breathing as he tries to get comfortable. He lies on one side until it escalates, struggles up, wanders restlessly, and then slides down into a sphynx position until he gets to tired, then lies down on his other side. Wash, rinse, repeat.

He no longer has the energy to really patrol the yard, and when he does go out, he goes potty right by the door, and then spends most of his time doing the Sphynx again (we are clearly choosing to channel The Bangles in our dotage).

But again, that, we could live with, adjust to. And have done just that.

But now? While there have been moments this week where he seems like Sam and does all that stupid shit that Sam has always done (see: exhuming/consuimng dead rabbits, eating cat poop, humping whatever moves--or sometimes doesn't), a lot of the time he just isn't there. I mean, he's in the room, he's cognizant and not disoriented. But the look in his eye is at best dispassionate and disengaged, and at worst, wild-eyed and stressed (we call that crazy eye, or storm eye, or... "You've got that crazy look in your eye again, Har." <---bonus points for movie reference!).

Mostly, though, it's tired. I don't know how else to explain it. And possibly, esp. given his philodendron with fur state, no one else would even notice it. But I have. And it's gone from intermittent to most of the time. Instead of his normal irritation at being fawned over, it's active disengagement.

And so we did those xrays, hoping we'd see something we could treat with acupuncture or antidepressants or antacids or some other medication that probably doesn't start with "A"...but this time, not so much. His lungs are full. He has lost much of his capacity, and from the progression in the last two weeks, it is probably rapidly diminishing.

Our vet said days, maybe a couple of weeks. There is a rare chance we'd go until October. But things would not get better--the good moments would continue to ebb away, become fewer and fewer. Those days or weeks we would have? They would be for me, and me alone. And each moment between then and now there would a very real chance that something awful could happen.

Fact of life: Dying sucks balls--at least for those left behind. Yeah, death sucks...but it doesn't have to be horrible.

We leave Friday night for WI, as I have a mountain bike race. We will be gone over the weekend, and while I know Jaciqe is totally capable, and I know that our vet would come over here, day or night, while we are gone should she call...I don't want her to have to deal with that. (Nor would I want to be gone if something DID happen.) And next week Pat will be travelling, and as lame and pathetic and selfish as this is, I couldn't do this alone...and god forbid if something tragic happened, I wouldn't want to do that alone, either.

And so we will say goodbye on a beautiful September day. We will say goodbye, like Karma said, when we still have those happy moments. We will make a final memory that will be incredibly sad but filled with people who know us, and who know sam, and can laugh and snark through our tears.

Without a doubt, this is the hardest, most incomprehensible, inexplicable thing I have ever done.

Not the losing Sampson. Not the saying goodbye after spending more than a third of my life with that curmudgeonly old man. That will be hard...but I understand it. The hardest thing is the letting go. It is making the choice to use that beautifully horrible power we have been given--and the strength to follow through with that decision.

I'll see you all later