Our second family beagle, Nuala, died quite suddenly Saturday morning, September 21st, 2013, at my folks’ house in Alabama.
Looking back through photos of Nuala – and her mother, Molly – reminds me of much happier times.
The more recent photos are also a reminder of the struggle that has been the last three and a half years.
I can remember picking the dogs up at the kennel in Alabama with my dad a week or two after the motorcycle accident. Molly and Nuala were thrilled to see us, their wagging tails lifting my spirits momentarily until the gut wrenching pain and realization of the true circumstances returned. The fifteen hour drive back to San Antonio. The month in Chris’s apartment, our command post of sorts while he was in the STICU at University Hospital. Packing Chris’s entire adult life into boxes…
The shady RV park in south Austin, where my parents lived for several months while Chris was at Texas NeuroRehab. Having the dogs at my apartment in north Austin, while Chris was at the nursing home. Back to San Antonio, again in an apartment, near HealthSouth RIOSA.
Losing Molly. And Nuala spending weeks looking for her mom. Closing out the RIOSA chapter, and the return to Alabama.
New hope, the trip to TIRR in Houston, Nuala always along for the ride. This time in an RV park near the medical center.
Molly and Nuala were kind of a connection to the past, and a connection to how things were before the accident. Taking them out for walks, in all these unfamiliar places, was head-clearing and therapeutic: much more for my benefit than theirs.
I brought Chris’s wheelchair down to where my folks buried Nuala, along with Molly’s ashes from San Antonio. I could swear I saw a tear welling up in one of Chris’s eyes.
1998 – 2013
