rip

I had this whole blog post I was actually writing in my head when I was in the ocean my last day in Puerto Rico during my work/play trip all of last week. I was finally calm after two really shitty weeks in New York and then two intense days of amazing but tiring work in Puerto Rico where I actually felt accomplished. About how I need to learn Spanish and I feel like I should remember more from high school Spanish but then again I don't remember high school math. About how the AIDS crisis in Puerto Rico isn't going to end just because I write about it. About how scared I was about traveling alone, but how it all worked out ok. About my new friends, a gay male couple moving to Paris who I totally want to visit. About how my own personal cat lady fear is being an old fag hag. About how I stopped a purse snatcher on the beach (ok, that story's awesome so I'll write about it at some point). And about how I was happy again.

But I will not blog about that, because I'll never be able to think of the Puerto Rico trip without thinking about how in the taxi ride home I talked to my dad who broke the news that my dog Nickel died while I was gone. She was 14, which is the average standard poodle age and she wasn't in much pain for long before she died and only really started getting old this year. And the truth is, I'm at the age where my childhood pet is going to die. I never knew that before, that early 20s seems to be the average age for losing your pet, but in the last two years almost all of my friends' dogs and cats from childhood have died. It's almost like a weird natural marker. Like, ok, dogs .and cats aren't meant to live past a childhood span. The kids had their fun, now it's time to die Even now, when I say "my dog died" I feel like I need to clarify that it's my childhood dog, since I'm at an appropriate age to have my "own" dog. And if that hypothetical dog died it would be a different tragedy, since that dog would have to be young. I've never thought of any of this before.

I know it's like she wasn't ever going to outlive me, and my mom's much sadder since she lived with Nickel daily and I've been out of the house for a while, but it's sad and surreal for me. I never really understood how sad it is to lose a pet until now that it happened to me. I always say a courtesy, "I'm so sorry" when someone tells me but I didn't really feel it. I wish I could have been there when was died, but maybe it's better. All I have are the happy memories. Of picking her out when I was in third grade. Of cuddling on the couch. When she used to play balloon volleyball. How all the neighbors in our old neighborhood knew her by name even if they didn't know me. When she would hump the little black stuffed animal.

Nickel was honestly a member of my family, a little weirdly so. The joke was that I was the only member of my immediate family who wanted to admit she was a dog, when everyone else acted like she was human. And that's true. I totally loved her, but I got mad when my high school yearbook ad my parents took out, they signed her name for all of OHS to see. And I still think it's weird that Nickel's in my brother's bar mitzvah pictures. But now I feel like a member of my family died, because it's true Also like the family I had growing up is officially dead. Because it is. Even though they're divorced, my parents literally "co-parented" Nickel, with my dad seeing her whenever possible, even though I just realized he didn't even live with her for half her life. I really think my parents' newfound friendship won't really exist without Nickel as the glue. And my mom might get a dog, or I will, or my dad will, or my brother will, but we'll never have a dog. The only family I ever knew officially doesn't exist anymore. And hopefully one day I will make my own family with my own dog. But that will be that because this was this. And that's sad, but I guess this is growing up.