sadness

Read more about the article A very bad week

A very bad week

Life does not organize itself for our convenience or happiness. The past seven days have delivered two losses that have left my wife and I bereft.

Irene’s Mum, Celina, died on Thursday, November 28 after a brief stay in the ICU at Trail Hospital. My sister Judy passed on Tuesday, December 3 in the Agassiz Senior’s Community after a short couple of months of extreme decline from rapidly progressive dementia.

I’m trying to figure out how to deal with these events, bumbling my way through being supportive of other family members, and generally feeling quite lost and rather irrelevant.

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Read more about the article Mom
Oct. 24, 2007

Mom

My mother, Margaret Adams, passed away in early August. Her passing was not a shock- dementia had largely taken her from us several years earlier. Even so, it has taken me a while to get my thoughts in a row and post this.

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Disruptions in our furry family

My wife and I love our critters, in particular our feline family. It has been the norm during our 27 years together for us to have something like six or seven cats sharing our household. This isn’t ‘by design’, but it seems to work out that way.

For the first time in a while, however, we are down to five cats in our house. And it is a hard change to accept.

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And Jasmine too…

We knew it was a possibility, perhaps even probable.  But that didn’t make losing Jasmine at the end of May any easier.

Irene and I both noticed something wrong as soon as we came back from our week-long cruise.  Jasmine looked “puffy” around her chest, and seemed somewhat disinterested and dull.  After a few days, she seemed to be having problems breathing.  An X-Ray showed fluid and a possible mass in her chest cavity.  Fluid was drawn, and ultrasound performed.  The mass was quite large, 4 cm by 2 cm, and looked like a tumor.  The fluid drawn from the chest, which eased Jasmine’s breathing for only a day or so, was also tested: it confirmed the worse.

Jasmine kitten- October, 2010

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Letting Harley go…

We had our kitten Harley, barely five months old, euthanized last night.  His last ten days of life were full of subcutaneous fluids, forced feedings, several antibiotics, and lots of love.  In the end I was faced with a decision I never want to have to repeat.  Harley’s immune system was damaged beyond repair by the feline leukaemia virus and, although we had managed to keep him alive for a few extra days, it wasn’t going to get better.

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Willow is gone

Our cat Willow died today. Two hours ago, I was in Chilliwack visiting family, and Irene called me to tell me to come straight back and meet her at the emergency clinic. She had found Willow thrashing on the floor. Irene tells me that Willow was gone by the time she was at the clinic, less than fifteen minutes after she called me. There was nothing to be done.

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