as much as i hate the instant finality of sudden deaths...

emotionally they are easier for me to deal with then the prolonged and progressive illness and final deaths.
the ones like misty, gwen, little big bud...while they hit you like a ton of painful and crippling bricks...are so obvious that there is nothing left to be done..there really is only one final outcome so i can't make the wrong decision and screw the one we care about up.

but the merry's, the doris's...maybe today or tomoorow...the charlie's...i feel like i am in a maze of decision making and i have no natural, inborn and infallible sense of direction so i end up feeling totally lost....and i just don't like the responsibility of getting things for them wrong.

mo made the final decision for gwen..but it was the same one i too would have made. we had quickly done the necessary testing and critical diagnostics so the answer to both of us was clear. and i know mo is still having a hard time of it...but it is gwen's actual loss she is dealing with...not a ton of doubts surrounding the before and afters of trying to do right by her very best friend.

i suppose sometimes a prolonged diagnosis is easier because you have time to wrap your head around their eventual death...but from experience, i think not. spritely was a dead horse from the time that she arrived, and that life and death three year roller coaster ride just cemented this deep need inside me for her to forever stay a miracle horse. i think i will never really come to terms with tyra's final death...it was two weeks of hoping she would recover, and a lifetime of guilt following that i failed to recognize her aging body and participated in her final and prolonged crises because i simply could not lose her yet.

sometimes when i look back after their deaths to who they were when they came here...like merry...to who they were at their deaths. and then i am horrified that i let them go so far...why did i just not end it sooner for them?

but it is because i don't know. i just don't know if they can and will always get better...sometimes they do...and sometimes they don't. but if they don't...then i know we were on the very wrong road.

but today i do know that if misty, bud and gwen were going to die in the blink of an eye...it was beyond any decision...it snuck past any intervention...it was just the final and irrevocable natural end of much cared for lives.

every life has the end of life time bomb ticking inside...sometimes we find it soon enough to try to intervene but if it is the real end of life thing...we are going to lose. i just wish those freaking bombs were more clearly marked.