Monday, March 10, 2014

The Price of Happy Moments



I can't stop thinking about Saturday morning.  How you were thriving.  There was a moment, for maybe two or three minutes, where your eyes were wide open.  Your breathes, deep and intentional.  You grabbed your facemask with your lips and sucked on it, that little tongue wiggling around.  You looked so aware.  So alive.  I was happy, at that moment, and didn't have a worry in the world.

It all changed so quickly.  

A minute later during a routine suction, your forehead furrowed in pain and your eyes snapped shut.  You arced our back.  Winced.  You changed colors so quickly.  I'd never seen you blue like that.  When I worked with baby mice, I remember sometimes I'd come in at morning and find the dead ones, once warm and pink, now turned black and blue.  They were always in the corner of the cage, the adult mice having tossed them away from the rest of the other babies who were still alive.  That's the first image that flashed through my head when I saw you change that deathly color.  Those little blue mice, tossed away.  I went cold at the thought.

That earlier, three minute moment in the morning that I had with you is so bittersweet to think about.  Untainted, happy moments like those seem so rare now.  And so costly.  

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