Mandolin Rain

I think I made good on the promise I made to Sheba after I realised, she wasn’t coming back. All six pups – Blue, Gracie (now Layla), Ginger (now Cheech), Gigi, Kal-El and Kreed – are healthy, thriving and now in their forever homes.

But now I’m alone and this house just vibrates differently without the heavy breathing and scrambling and pawing at my bedroom door. Or the back door. Or the front door. Any door really.

I keep looking down in the shower expecting a blue nose to poke behind the curtain to see why I’m taking so long.

But the one thing I really want isn’t going to happen.

Sheba isn’t coming back. The pups aren’t coming back.

And no bitch, they can’t be replaced. Fuck you for even considering that shit.

It’s just too damned quiet.

Music and television don’t help. The Melatonin tablets have nothing on that instinct to pitch up at three in the morning because my body knows it’s time to let the boys out to pee…  I’m more exhausted than ever and unbelievably sad.

I had to let them go.

I’m not in a place to care for her pups the way they need to be.

I’ve had friends tell me to calm down because ‘things like this happen all the time’. People lose loved ones and fur babies and manage to multitask every day. Women are mothers and caretakers and providers and wives all at once and they get shit done. Well good for them.

I’ve been taking care of other people’s kids since I could walk. Kids, and homework, and households and honestly – that multitasking life was overrated. I got out of that business when I turned 20 and left for university.

What my friends sometimes forget is that all the shit they’re doing now? The caretaking and the mothering and the putting others before self? Been there, done that.

I was burdened with toddlers and pre-schoolers and dozens of cousins in high school and college all while they were out around town living their best lives. There’s a reason I never made it to all the parties and sleepovers and shit. I’ve already helped raise one set of humans damn near my own age.

And now I’m dealing with loss. Again.

And I can’t just snap out of it. I didn’t get to mourn her the first time and now her kids are gone.

For fuck sake let me wallow in despair for a minute, will you? Just, let me spiral. Go dark. Then swim my way back up from the depths and just be a fucking great friend and have a buoy waiting.

Shit.

The silence is deafening in this house.

I can hear nothing and everything all at once.

But the rain. The rain settles me…

—

Song: Mandolin Rain
Artist: Bruce Hornsby & The Range
Album: The Way It Is
Release date: 1987