Gus

I'm not usually at a loss for words. But today I was forced to say goodbye to my dearest companion. My Gus. My buddy. The one who hugged me every night and greeted me at the door when I came home. Who gave me "kisses" and tapped me on the shoulder every night while I was sleeping so I could lift up the covers so he could curl up in the crook behind my knees and sleep most of the night.

Ever since Eli passed away 11 months ago, Gus went downhill. He dropped weight, fought of colds and ate like he couldn't get enough, but was quickly skin and bones. We put him on thyroid medication, but that only made him feel worse because they suspected he also had liver failure. I thought we'd lose him in March, then again in June, and September, and just when I thought maybe he'd pull through, he walked up to me today unable to control his back legs. I immediately choked. I got the kids out of the house and came back to find him on our bed, looking fairly normal, and sighed. If he could get on the bed, maybe it was a fluke. But then he disappeared. And later as I was hanging up clothes, heard him cry desperately for me and found him curled up in the back corner, unable to move and scared. I grabbed a towel and sat there with him in my lap for two hours, crying and petting him.

When the kids came home I let him be, checking on him every twenty minutes. We didn't move, but he was breathing still, and I wasn't sure what to do. I kept telling him I'd come back and he kept waiting for me. I was a mess, but I kept getting hugs and kisses from my empathetic children, and tried to function. After the kids went to bed I came back and sat next to him, not sure if he wanted to be left in peace or if he needed me there, when I watched him go blind and reach desperately towards the air in fear, and decided that I couldn't let him die on the floor.

I sat with him in my lap for another two hours as I desperately felt for the last bits of breathe and heard his last four sighs... I sang to him and let my tears fall on him and told him not to be scared. Though I was terrified. In the end he arched, and choked, and scrambled, and I died inside too just as Shannon came to check on us and be there for him at the end. I let him stay in my lap for about 15 minutes more, knowing that it was the last if get to hold him while Shannon prepared a spot for him. Still he never touched the ground until he was put in it.

He had grown so frail that I had a hard time remembering how he could do flips in the air after toys. He loved French fries and popcorn... He kept me company all those nights I felt alone, and then spend every waking moment with the family right up until the end, no matter how loud they were or how hard Colin pulled his tail. I told a friend just five days ago that I hadn't heard him hiss in ten years. Even when he had grown old and sick.

Everyday I think I feared walking in and finding him dead, and hoping I wouldn't have to see him that way. Tonight I couldn't bear to leave him even knowing that was exactly what would come. I wish I could say I always gave him my everything, but the truth is is always gave me his all, from the second he jumped up on the fence as a tiny kitten in the yard of a kitten eating Rottweiler. I grabbed him, put him in my lap and named him Gus, and he lived with me in every apartment I did since I was 19 years old.

I lost my best friend tonight. I am so grateful he was mine for almost fourteen years. I hope he is with Eli now, and I am comforted by the fact that I was with him as he took his last breath.


I have many, many more pictures of Gus, but they are scattered within all of the pictures of family, because he was just that... my family.