Thoughts Tonight

I wasn't going to post again tonight. I wanted to let the picture and plea for Betsy to stand out; for everyone to know that finding her a home is the most important thing right now, but I can't.

I've been on hiatus. Not really, but I've been trying to resume my old life, while still juggling the animal rescue issues that are left to deal with (finding adoptive homes, communicating with owners, uploading pictures...the kinds of residual rescue issues we are all facing after our time in NOLA). But aside from the day-to-day, I've been on heart-hiatus, you might say. I wasn't letting myself relive those moments from the rescue. I couldn't. Honestly, it's been too hard.

But tonight, I posted for Betsy on Craig's list, and I started to read through the postings that were out there in the last week or so under the "Pets" section (for NOLA). All of a sudden, seeing the photos, hearing the desperation, reading the pleas of owners...made it all come flooding back. And then, I found a post that someone had written regarding the St. Bernard school shootings. They meticulously listed all the CNN video packages (there are three: 9/30, 10/1, and 10/20), describing the carnage and the owner's losses.

It broke my heart all over again.

Then I read the stories of other rescuers who have seen what I have seen. I couldn't even finish reading them. My tears were too heavy.

And then I looked at Matt's website again (www.justthinkingaboutit.blogspot.com). Every one of those dogs looked like animals I had seen, fed, cared for. I identified with every rescue worker who held dogs, cats, food and leashes, and I knew how they felt. I saw the photo of a female rescuer who held a leash in her hand, ready to slip gently around the neck of the doggie to the right, while another dog laid dead at her fead. It was all too familiar.

The tears just kept falling.

So here I am tonight, wondering how I will ever make sense of this tragedy and thinking about how I would ever live through it if my loyal pup of 10 years were to be lost, or separated or shot after surviving a flood. I have no answers. No. Only tears.

How will we ever heal from this loss of life, this horrible lesson in survival, this painful road to rehabilitation, this dicotomy of feeling death and revival all at once?

There is no hollywood ending tonight. Instead, sleep arrives as a light drizzle of tears wash across my pillow.