I had started crying my eyes out over a month ago when Plato first showed signs of going downhill quickly. I was preparing for that day for a while, yet it always comes too soon, and Stan and I wish we could both hold him just one last time. However if we had that last time, we’d always want one more last time after that.

I keep thinking of all these things to write down, short remembrances of him, like the day we brought him home, and when he (and we) discovered beds and how he was “good in bed” (he just lied down and slept, unlike our then-pug, Hieronymus, who would chase around on them and do a bad doggy potty thing).

I remembered when we travelled with Plato when he was still just a few months old to go to Stan’s Dad’s funeral, and then when he was about a year old to go up north to the UP to see the Paulding lights. I remember a photo of him with Hieronymus and a gigantic mushroom.  I remember his silly tricks like “go get the hair tie”, and how he would spin around on the futon and stop and stare at my paintings on the wall, as if the metallic cosmos-like reflections did something to his imagination.

I remembered how up until recently he would snuggle with me and Lucifer Sam on my futon under a blanket in the middle of the day.

I remember so many things, too many to recount.

In the early morning of  Thursday, May 27, 2010, I awoke to a horrible dream. I dreamt that Stan had a bunch of blue crushed up crystals that looked like Azurite. But I knew what it was, it was Cyanide. He said that we could take it because life had gotten horrible. At that moment, this strange feeling swept through my body, still dreaming, and I started to see our situation from a strange and scary perspective. I did not want to die, yet I was frightened that Stan thought it was so awful. I told him no, I was not ready, that if I was in terrible physical pain I would consider it, but not now. I woke up and cried my eyes out.

That night we had put Plato upstairs in the air-conditioning to try to calm him and cool him, yet he still barked all night. Stan slept with earplugs. I could still hear him. Early in the morning when Stan got up for the early shift, I recounted my dream, and tried to get him to stay home. See, I’m an oracle. Oracles speak in strange words and images that don’t always make sense. He went to work anyway.

Plato would not settle down that morning. He was constantly asking me to take him outside to relieve himself, he was constantly panting from pain. He was maxed out on the highest dose our vet allowed us to give him of the painkillers. Even though he had regained his appetite a bit and was eating regular dog food and his poo was more normal-looking, he was crying in pain more and more when one tried to pick him up because he could not lift himself up.

Stan called from work and we discussed it. We realized he was trying to tell us he wanted to go…it was time. He made an appointment with the vet for later that afternoon, and around 2:45-3:00 pm he left this world.

I still cannot stop crying