Angry Black Lady Chronicles

Thanks to everyone who has been so kind to me over the last week. I really appreciate all the texts, emails, tweets, Facebook comments and messages, flowers, and phone calls. And even if I haven’t responded directly to your tweet or comment, I have read them all and am extremely grateful for your kindness. You all have made what has been the crappiest week of my life a little less crappy. I know I’m absent a lot — between my tumor and struggles with depression over the last several years, I am isolated and in my own head more frequently than not.  So it means a lot that so many of my friends, readers, acquaintances, and online compadres, have reached out to me, especially since I know there are times when I should have reached out to you and didn’t.

I’ve been mourning Nate Dogg’s passing for a while now — probably a year. With each gray hair. With each inability to climb stairs. With each missed step. I thought that mourning him in advance would make it easier and in some ways it has. But when the time came, I realized I just didn’t want him to go. But he had to.

The bottom line is, we want our pets to live forever and they don’t. All we can do is love them as much as we can when we have them, and create as many happy memories as possible. Even now as I wonder if I could have done something differently — spent more time with him, fed him more treats — I know that I gave him 13 more years than he otherwise would have had (I adopted him 2 days before a kill shelter was going to put him down), and they were an amazing 13 years. So when the guilt creeps up, I try to push it away, along with my tears.

Every pet owner who has lost a furry friend has gone through the same thing I am, and it’s somewhat comforting to know that I’m not the only one going through/having gone through this pain. But at the same time, it feels like no one else in the world has ever gone through this pain. Grief is funny that way.

Nate touched a lot of people’s lives, even people he never met, and it really touches my heart that so many of you have shed tears for him, too.

Thank you.

UPDATE 1/31: He’s gone. He died peacefully in my arms. Rest in peace, my dear sweet boy. I’ll never stop loving you.

I don’t know how to write a proper eulogy when he’s still alive. I just know I won’t have the strength to write one when he’s gone, and I know that many of my dear Angry Black Readers have loved him nearly as much as I have over the years. So here goes nothing:

Nate Dogg has been the doggie love of my life since I first moved to Los Angeles after graduating from law school. One day in November 2001, I decided, “I want a dog.” I’d never owned a dog before, save a brief stint with a basset hound when I was 12 or so. (Her name was Maude, but we couldn’t keep her for very long, so I never got attached to her.)

I’d never had any other pets — save a parakeet that my Dad named “Slim” (say it like you’re in a blacksploitation movie — Slee-im.) But I never bonded with Slim. Do people bond with birds? I’m sure some people do. But I digress.

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I don’t know what made me want to get a dog suddenly, but like most things I put my mind to, I did it right away. Impulsively and without thinking. I hopped in the car and headed to a shelter. Continue reading →