In a surprise turn of events I’m at my parents house now alone.
I was in the Cayman Islands for a week. It is a strange land, filled with wealthy old white people, blue water, and incredible underground caves. Its history, like most of the Caribbean, is sordid and complex. Though things lay just on the surface with names for vacation spots like “colonial cove” and (I shit you not) “plantation villas.”
While we were away our old dog had a seizure and is now at the animal hospital. So, instead of getting on the connecting flight to Montreal I decided to stay in Toronto for the weekend to see her. My grandparents found her shaking in the backyard. We said this would be her last summer, but now we wonder if she will make it to the rotten heat of late august. I know it wouldn’t be right to mourn her death before it happens, but her current absence in the house feels like a chapter left behind. Every time I go downstairs, I step quietly in fear of waking her, though she long since lost her hearing, and then I turn to the carpet and see she is gone.
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