May 12th, 2009
Goodbye, Yuki
one of his favorite hiding spots
I witnessed the death of my best friend at the age of thirteen, from a gunshot wound. I held the hand of a friend as leukemia stole him away. My heart even stopped beating for a few minutes, until I was pulled from the water and resuscitated. Death and I, we go way back. Up until this week though, I’ve only experienced the ends of human lives.
Yuki was my first real pet. My parents got a dog while I was in middle school, but she was always their dog, not mine. She’s still alive too, at the age of fourteen. Yuki showed signs of illness last Monday at around 1am. I took him to an emergency clinic and the vet determined that the most likely culprit was mycoplasma pneumonia. She gave him an antibiotic and took x-rays and I made an appointment to see his regular vet the next day. He agreed with her diagnosis and sent me home with more antibiotics. He was only about fifteen months old, which is young, even for a rat. I foolishly thought we had more time, that he couldn’t possibly be dying now.
oh hai
He never got better, and that week he stopped eating and drinking. I brought him back in on Sunday, May 10th after attempts to hand-feed him for the past couple of days. The vet couldn’t find what was wrong and decided to hospitalize him for blood tests. He called me a couple hours later to tell me that Yuki had died while under the sedative. I went back to see him one last time. He looked peaceful, like he was just sleeping and would open his eyes at any moment.
That night, I went through photos and videos I have of Yuki I cried in a manner that could be classified as ‘hysterically’ for the better part of an hour, and on and off throughout the night.
http://www.vimeo.com/4586278
video by my friend Matt, who looked after Yuki while Sean and I worked in California for a couple of months
While experiencing the deaths of very close friends was painful and difficult, Yuki’s death is almost harder to deal with. I couldn’t ask him what hurt. I couldn’t explain to him that the foul-tasting antibiotics I forced into his mouth were in an effort to make him feel better. I couldn’t hold his hand while he came to terms with death. I couldn’t tell him I loved him or reminisce about all the good times we had together. I could only look at his body, knowing that he had left it, and me.
Since Sean travels so much for his work (such as now…as bad as this was for me, I can only imagine how terrible it is to have to hear the news over the phone, too far away to do anything) and I work from home, Yuki was the one constant companion I had throughout many days. Even though he didn’t take up much room, I feel a great emptiness in the house now.
we spoiled him with his own pancakes
I wish I had spent more time with him.
I wish I had held him right before before the vet took him away to be hospitalized.
I wish he were still alive. I miss him so much.
Goodbye, dear friend.
