chris jury wrote:I guess rural living gives one a different perspective. we killed things all the time. and putting down a dog was pretty regular...although always unpleasant. Where I'm from, vets are for livestock. If a dog got bit by something, severely wounded or develops a taste for the neighbors chickens, it was time to walk out to the back 40 with the dog and the deer rifle. Man that sucked.
Yes, I had to kill my cat with my bare hands, unfortunately.
She hated the vet so intensely--it would have been the gravest of indignities had she gone out in that way. So I broke her neck for her.
That's Montanans and Dakotans for you.
My mother died of ALS (Lou Gehrigs disease). She slowly, over the course of 3 years, lost function in her limbs, breathing, and speach. it was the most horrible thing i've ever seen. Driving out to the cemetary west of town in my dad's pickup, with her ashes in an urn in my lap...that sucked.
Watching someone disappear in stages is no fun. You'd almost rather you just lost them outright--*snap*. Though that's no fun either.
Ashes are hardcore. You see someone in the flesh, and a few days later, they're, literally, a pile of fuckin' ash. Ash, that you can sift.
It gives one a certain perspective on things.
It simplifies life to get one's head around death. It is the most banal thing in the universe, yet somehow it (fear of it, proximity of it, impending arrival of it) can just fuckin' paralyze people.