It has been a while. Perhaps that’s the truth of it. Perhaps that’s the justification, as far as reasons can be excuses. The longer it seems that I choose not to write, the further my need for it deserts me. Like watching a hat snatched by the wind, and not giving chase.


And there is so many to type. There is even more to write, and to tell, and to put into words and in limn, but I would think… yes, I would think that I shall write this first.


Two weeks, I counted. More or less. I haven’t written anything here for two weeks. There has been many to tell, but being so long already, being almost part of a more distant, easily forsaken memory, perhaps there isn’t much about them to talk about anymore.


There was my brother’s convocation, held at a beach with long waves and gloomy skies. The whole family was there and it was something that I took a lot of pictures of. There had been lonely walks on the beach and interesting people to tell, but it is almost forgotten now, at least to this moment.


There was a normal week, which ended with a trip to the arcades and a lot of money spent on coins. But that, too, is almost forgotten.


There was dad leaving to Laos for work. Bro and I were there to fetch him to his plane.


And there was, of course, the death of my dog, Max. I have not forgotten that. I don’t believe I ever will.


He died on Monday evening at the car porch. The vet didn’t know why he was sick and what sickness he caught. I was with him in the waiting. It was somewhat peaceful.


A week later, now, people asked and I would tell them that he was old. Max was, at least, on his tenth or eleventh year, and in the course of the week I have convinced myself that there was nothing more that I could’ve done. And there wasn’t.


A few days before he was merely having diarrhoea and a mild lack of appetite. Later on he refused to eat and we took him to the vet who gave him jabs and pills to take home and instructions to force feed him with canned food. So I spent the weekend and Monday taking care of him, feeding him with syringes. In the process I got under the weather; had fever and a badly swollen throat.


On Monday I actually thought he was better, because he had been wandering around the garden after long intervals. I continued to feed and gave him his pills. In the afternoon the fever got the better of me, so I swallowed some panadol and slept for a bit. When I woke it was beginning to rain, so I got out to move Max into someplace warmer. I found him lying in the garden. He didn’t want to move.


I urged him back to the porch, and it was the last walk he ever made. I dried him with a towel and draped it around him like a blanket, and after awhile he slumped down and I thought I should feed him a bit. He wouldn’t swallow. He wouldn’t drink. And that was when I thought, in the way you always seem to know, somehow, the way some things are and it is the undeniable and inevitable truth, that this was it, and he was going to die.


So I made him as comfortable as I could do with towels and old cloths. And I waited.
I talked to him. I told him he was a good boy, and that he really was one. After a long while I simply stopped talking, and I stroked his head and waited, watching him breathing, breathing, and I waited. We waited.


Sometime later some of the neighbour’s relatives dropped by and chattered away, uncaring and ignorant and noisy. I remembered wishing that they would go. They did, after sometime, and it was rather quiet after. Only the drizzle sound over the dad’s fountains and the occasional passing car. And soon there was only breathing, breathing, and there was wait.


I don’t remember a long time passing. It was cold and it was real, and it was the way anticipation seem to haunt your every second, letting me wonder if any breath would’ve been the last, or I would just look down and see that the chest have stopped heaving, and that he was gone without my noticing. Soon I could tell that he could no longer see, and that was when his body succumbed to numerous spasms. Violent shudders and jerks that seemed painful, but he made no sound of pain.


Just then, just happening like it would have, like I would’ve known and expected, his body curved into a gentle, graceful arc, and what left his mouth was a soft and final howl, and he relaxed and was gone.


I couldn’t describe how very much real it was at that time. It wasn’t like a dream, it wasn’t like a blurred residue of forgotten and forsaken memories. There wasn’t a single drop of question, of wondering, of telling myself that I couldn’t believe it, and that Max was dead. Really dead. It didn’t happen. It was the quick realisation and ultimatum, the drop of reality and truth.


I couldn’t describe how cold I seemed to have acted. How cold I was, to move his body away from the porch, to try and arrange the legs so it won’t stuck at weird angles. How cold I was, to soap the porch and scrub with a brush to remove the blood and dirt. How cold I was, to cover the body with a towel, to call my mother and brother and father without a tear or, so I seemed and felt, without a tinge of sadness.


So cold I was, and now that I think of it, I wonder where my heart went.


Daily I walked passed the empty kennel, and days before I used to look at it longer and sometimes sigh. Now the sighs grew less and I spent more time smiling at my other dog, Lanna, who seemed to me is completely ignorant of the whereabouts of her companion, and I believe that that’s the best for her.


That week I had a terrible throat infection, and it gave me fever that often left me freezing one moment, and the other baking as though stuck in an oven, so I took the week off classes and was stricken to the couch for most days.


I’m glad to say that I’m back in classes, albeit very much behind of work. Work which I have to quickly tend to…


A bad week? Quite, really, but it is all, perhaps, just as we often do, just say. Just words and agreements. But maybe if it had - if it was - better, maybe if things were different, like, say, dad was around in his own reliable way, then perhaps maybe things would’ve been different. I didn’t ask myself that, not until now, and now that it is asked and left unanswered, perhaps it’s not something that I will ever ask again.


Because we were never meant to ask it. We’re only meant to move on, to another week.