Love for My Lily-Face

I’m on the verge of tears tonight, weighed down with worry and memory. Just less than two and a half years ago, my sweet baby Delilah was lost to a battle with a facial tumor. She was just a rat.

No.

She was a friend, a comfort, a confidant, a companion, a ceaseless fountain on love and support. She loved me unconditionally and she was torn from me violently over a three week period after a three year friendship. She suffered and I can’t help but blame myself. I feel like I let her down. I have let down so many…

It was a tornado of events even before she got sick. I was homeless for the first time. Ashamed and beaten, I was already planning on going home. I then lost my store as well as I discovered that my manager didn’t like me and was transferring me out. During a nearly shattering blow to my recently built up image of my own self-worth, then a careful period of reinforcement, both at subsequent music venues, I also had to deal with the falseness of a supposed good friend, and the heavenly appearance of a new friend. Then- tragedy, my Delilah was torn from me unceremoniously. I didn’t even have anywhere to bury her. And, as if I didn’t have enough on my plate, just days later, the car accident that sent me packing, spirit broken, tail between my legs. I’ve never been as shaken as I was that night in the Arby’s parking lot with my bags over my shoulders, tow-truck disappearing in the distance, and no one answering on the other line of my desperately punched phone numbers. I couldn’t stop myself from letting go the wrenching sobs born in my chest. I have never been so low.

Now, two and a half years later, the scars still run deep. I don’t notice them until moments like these. When I brought my Delilah into the vet after first noticing the tumor on her cheek, they were confident that surgery to remove the mass would be a successful solution to our problem. They were very very wrong.

I have to bring my sweet Lily-face, dear friend for the past year and a half, to the vet in eight hours. She has a mammary tumor larger than a tangerine and the vet said she was confident that surgery to remove the mass will be successful. Logically she’s right. The tumor is run of the mill. It is most likely benign, as most rats’ mammary tumors are, and there is no evidence of any other tumors growing in any other region of her body. The tumor does not seem to have infiltrated her chest cavity, and will most likely take half an hour to remove at most.

Nevertheless, I feel a deep seeded sense of impending doom. I am terrified to the pit of my being. I can’t sleep, my stomach churns, my hands shake. I am reliving every single moment of those months I spent in Phoenix, the rollercoaster ride of emotions, the loss. I miss Delilah too much to express, and I worry even more for the safety of my baby, Lily. There are so many things that can go wrong, and there are so many loved ones that I have lost tragically and unexpectedly: My Nonno, My Grandpa, Prince, Eve, Tulip, Spunky, Delilah, Thumper, Shamu, Steve. There is no line for me that separates family from friends from animals from strangers. For me, love is love, and I love with undeniable, undying passion.

I love Lily.

I am so scared.