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Let me start by saying that I started this blog as a place for me to rant.  This will show the good and bad sides of me, also known as a complex human being. It is impossible to maintain a truly bright outlook while you are taking care of your 82-year-old grandfather. It is impossible not to resent your aunt who lives in Florida and who has told you, her 20-year-old niece to take on the bulk of the responsibility--the responsibility which is hers. It is impossible not to feel like screaming the sixth time you have heard about a tennis injury. All I can do is try my best and hope that one day in the very near future, things start to get better (for all involved).

I feel like all the bad entered my life in November 2010. It was Black Friday, the mad shopping day supposedly filled with great deals and undoubtedly with rude customers. My mom and I had agreed that it was the thing that needed to be done the day before, Thanksgiving. He was sick, he was obviously suffering; and in our selfishness, we had expected him to live longer and to just tough it out. But he was our Alex, were we really expected to let him go? We had had him for about ten years. We rescued him from Sara at ...—he was one of her first adoptions. He was our second greyhound. No adopted greyhound is totally healthy; they are infamous for their teeth problems, caused by the high protein diet on the track. We got lucky with Alex, in many ways. He didn’t have many health issues; he only needed one dental surgery. (Bruno, our third, has had, to date a total of four.) He started getting sick when he hit the age of twelve or thirteen. We gave him medicine and tried to make him comfortable. We lied to ourselves and told ourselves and possibly those around us that he wasn’t suffering, that he was happy, just that he was old. On that Thanksgiving night, he couldn’t keep anything down. If he drank a few sips of water, he would throw it up a few minutes later. He was throwing up the whole night and in the morning; we took him to our vet and put him to sleep. He was the first of all my animals (there have been many) that I have sat with while the injection took place. I watched the life leave his body. I watched his panting go from fast and pained to slow and I hope, painless. I watched bodily fluids leave his body after he had finally hastened the death that I can only imagine he had been longing for far too long.

I think about that day often. I think about how blessed we were to take in a dog that had been so obviously abused (he was the first greyhound his owner had given up for adoption). It took him years to trust us. It was at least three years before he wagged his beautiful, red fawn tail. I think about how amazingly lucky we were that he was the sweetest dog we’ve had to date. In his manner of begging, he was never pushy; he would come up, look at you with his big, sweet, brown eyes and gently lay his head in your lap. And if your lap weren’t available, he would go to the closest possible surface, such as an armrest. He was a great dog in all aspects of his life. He never came in below third place in his racing career. He knew when we, his true and loving family, were sad, when we were happy. He never went after the cats or the bird. He never went digging through the garbage. He never messed in the house, not even once. I have not let him go and I’m not sure I ever will. I’m glad he is no longer suffering but I’m also truly devastated that he is no longer here with us, especially in light of what has happened since his death. I feel as though he is needed more than ever now. I have a little hate in my heart for myself because I feel I didn’t appreciate him fully when he was alive. Recently, I’m having a lot of struggles with my religious beliefs but I really like to think that Alex is somewhere better and that he is up there with Stampede and Chatter and Blabber and Pandy. I like to think that when death comes for our other animals, that they will be there to greet them. It’s a comforting thought, but in light of recent events, I’m not so sure there is a God.

On January 12, 2011, my grandfather tried to sit in a chair, missed, fell to the floor and broke his hip.  Surgery followed on Friday.  Until the surgery, he was on narcotics for the pain.  My grandfather on narcotics has led to him wandering halls naked, throwing pillows at nurses and hallucinating at least three different humans (all of whom refused to talk to him).  I knew visiting him would be fun.  The days before the surgery, he claimed that there was a cat under the sheets, he asked me to lock my mom into the bathroom and during conversation he would randomly look to his left and say, "Jerry, what do you think?"  Jerry is one of his friends, by the way, but Jerry was nowhere in sight.  After surgery, he tried to break my mom's finger and said, "That's just the way it goes."  He tried to strangle my aunt with his blood pressure cuff.  He looked at my mom, his face turned deadly serious and said, "Your father's praying for you."
She retorted, "But you're my father."
"No, I'm not."
"Then who is?"
He looked around the room, found the male nurse, pointed at him, and said, "He is."
My grandmother was holding his hand through all of this and he had started squeezing it so hard that it was turning purple, when he was informed of the color change, he said, "Oh, that's a pretty color."
Those are just a few of the insights my grandfather offered us while on narcotics.

My problems don't rest with my grandfather. Currently, they are mostly with my aunt. I keep thinking to myself, "What if she somehow finds this?" (Not that she's technically gifted.) Then I think, "So what?" All of this has been building for a while and this is just my place to let it all out. In all likelihood, no one will be reading this. Should she find it, maybe it will be a reality check, or maybe she'll get mad. I don't care if she gets mad, because I know that I am in no way unjustified in my feelings of resentment and anger.