The first and the last walk: September 2011
She was dying, no denying it now. Not even she could keep up the magical thinking. She was dying.
I was terrified to be without her, but also strangely relieved at the thought of getting out of her shadow.
She was my only family in a sense. My grandmother dead, my father long estranged, my sister a planet unto her own.
My mother had suffered me, as I had suffered her, and now she was dying.
She was home at the family house on the island that night we walked.
She had kicked me out as a renter, in 2009 after another modest suicide attempt, saying I was a liability.
Miraculously, I managed to get back into a rental apartment in a house I had rented previously with a new owner, and over the few years that followed, the landlord's dog had become my ward.
The dog lived with me in my apartment, slept in my bed, ate food I bought her.
He would pay for vet appointments and often take her from Friday till Sunday morning.
It was a great arrangement. That dog saved me when my family turned its back.
That apartment and that landlord's dog saved me.
