Dream and Death

So last night i drift off around 100. And i have this nightmare that my roomate's ex-girlfriend is decorating my bedroom. it is the third time that i have had this dream in the last week. She is taking down all of my photos and putting up frames with the demo photos still in them. and she is telling me about them like she knows the people in the photos, though clearly she doesn't. i keep asking her to stop but she just ignores me, hums and continues along. also, i am laying in the bed under the covers, naked. and i am paralyzed.

Then i woke up, around 3, to a phone call from my dad. I was incoherent and didn't answer, but i checked the message. His dog,the 16 YO cocker spaniel, molly was rolling around and crying. she had been in this state for maybe 3 days, and now wouldn't stop crying. She has some kind of heart condition and had probably had a stroke. She was in total misery and he felt really bad and didn't know what to do for her. Poor dad was just crying like a little boy. he felt the humane thing to do was to kill her and end her suffering. so he had called me to help him strategize the best, quickest method to end her life... AT 3:00 IN THE MORNING.

normally, i answer these freaky calls from my dad, be they about a breakup, a threesome, or an emergency animal execution. but last night i drew the line, set a boundary. i felt really sad for him, being in this predicament, but i felt for once, that it was not my responsibility. of course then i laid there for like another hour thinking what he should do.

this morning i called him to see how he handled it, and he seemed ok. He took her out with a sharp blow of a hammer. it sounds viscious and cruel, but it wasn't. my father has such a loving bond with animals, i'm sure he did what felt kindest. i have always respected his willingness to embrace love, and to not shy away from death. he said that he sat with her for a couple of hours and held her and pet her and that she just kept looking at him and crying.

i came in to work this morning and discussed this with a co-worker. she asked, "Why didn't he take her to the ER vet to be put to sleep?" And i was like, "what's the difference?" That led to a discussion about death, humanity and brutality, and how removed we all strive to be from death.