The Cruelest April Fool's Day of all...

Our beloved family pet, our shih tzu who had just turned 11 yesterday, has passed on. Yesterday when I took Fenway to the vet X-rays showed a chest cavity so full of liquid that his heart and liver were not visible, and he was only able to use about 25% of his lung capacity to breathe. Either a tumor or enlarged heart was the cause, and it was inoperable. The only humane thing to do was to release him from his pain. So I took him home to spend a night with his family, for the time necessary for all of our goodbyes, and then this morning I took him back to the vet and returned alone. I can't write any more than this because the pain is all too fresh, because he was my best friend for 11 years, and because I was up with him until 3:30 last night. I'll write more about my friend another day. For now, here are the two last pictures taken of Fenway from last night.

This morning I sat out on the back patio in the morning sun with Fenway as I've done so often since moving here three years ago this May. One of the readings this morning in The Divine Office was from Guadium et Spes, a Vatican II document on the Church in the modern world. It said in part:

Man, redeemed by Christ and made a new creation in the Holy Spirit, can and must love the very things created by God. For he receives them from God, and sees and reveres them as coming from the hand of God, As he gives thanks for them to his Benefactor, and uses and enjoys them in a spirit of poverty and freedom, he enters into true possession of the world, as one having nothing and possessing all things. For all things are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

Fenway was our gift from God for eleven years. We received him, revered him, and gave thanks for him. Indeed, my last words to Fenway as I hugged him on the table at the vet's for the last time as he was slipping away from consciousness were simply "thank you."