Within the past week I've gone to the theaters to watch two movies both involving themes of death.
I remember the first time I went to the psychiatrist and she mentioned that there was a lot of death that surrounded me. That was probably the cause of my depression.
Death has plagued me everywhere.
The first death that faced me was my dog.
I never really understood it until I watched the movie Marley & Me.
Apparently, dogs knew when they were going to die.
They wanted to be somewhere far from the house.
When my dog died, he went outside and lay in the shade on that beautiful Spring day.
I remember him before I left for school. Him laying in the grass, the sun shining down... he picked a beautiful day to die.
My mom said he wouldn't come in when she called him, so she left him outside all morning.
Then he died.
His life slipped away so peacefully, no one knew what had happened.
The next major death of my life would be my grandfather.
That was a sudden death. He had a sudden heart-attack and too much damage to his brain to live. There was no chance of him being able to live a normal life.
I was young then, so I honestly, didn't really understand.
I do remember this picture though. The picture of the dark hospital room with the light trying to shine through the closed curtains. The beeping of that awful machine.
He lay in bed - unresponsive, the literal meaning of the living dead. His hands were swollen and yellowed. As he neared his end he would occasionally twitch, his eyes fluttering open to stare at us with unseeing eyes.
A nightmare.
Then Misty, my horse.
I often regret I was not there for the final moments of her life when she had slipped away... we had to put her down due to a tumor in her leg. They didn't want us there, saying that when it happened, she would fall hard.
I wish I was there until her last breath.
I miss her so much.
To counter these depressive deaths, I bought myself a bird. He was a small lime-green parrotlet named Kaizoku. He was the best thing, hands down, that happened to me. He loved me, I loved him, he was perfect. We understood each other perfectly.
I went away on vacation.
I came back.
And he was gone.
I was so depressed.
Then Judy, my friend and mentor, and the woman I bought Kai from, gave me a beautiful lovebird. Her words: "She wanted to come home with you." She was a little angel, and she wanted me.
I remember one night, I lay in bed playing with her and fell asleep. When I woke up, she had curled herself into my arms. She was such a sweetheart.
A week later... she died.
I had given up hope.
And given up life.
Then my Grandma.
This happened a year ago.
And I was there the whole time.
She was diagnosed with leukemia. When she was in the hospital, I practically lived there. I dropped out of school because my marks were so bad from missing classes, and I faced the terribly experience of watching someone die.
In the Benjamin Button film, the woman telling the story is also a woman dying of cancer. It brought back so many awful memories - the screaming in the dark, the helplessness of the woman who used to take care of me...
Death is everywhere.
And it will always haunt me.
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