In Memoriam: Lord Diggleston of Upper Parksbury

Recently I was trying to explain the Treats For Everyone tradition here to Wendi Aarons so she wouldn't think I was weird(er) for posting about her cat's death on my blog. It's a touchy subject. I often feel as though I talk about death more than is comfortable for a lot of people. I think that people who get to know me realize it's just part of who I am and I hope they realize that it can be pretty useful to have one of those people around. For the uninitiated, though, I fear coming across as a (bigger) nutbag. So I scrolled through the posts under the Treats for Everyone tag to check and see if it represented me well before I sent the link to a writer I like and admire. I wound up in a spiral of remembrance. I realized that Pinto had died a year and a day after Emily. Now I will fear October with all my pets. When I got to Diego's short entry I had to stop.

I never wrote about his death. It was too complicated and emotional and at the time I posted I hadn't had a chance to talk to much of anyone about it. I thought I'd go back to it later. By now, of course, our whole canine clique has talked about it. A lot. We speak of him fondly and, if not often, certainly regularly. I could go back again and write about his life and death but I don't know...I just might not be ready to do that. It's kind of a you-had-to-know-him situation and I have to admit being reluctant to open him up to scrutiny. After Emily died I would occasionally go over to walk Diego. Ostensibly it was to help out his family because they were having trouble giving him enough exercise safely since his brain was broken and his reactions could be unpredictable. Really, though, it was because I was afraid to get out of the habit of walking a dog and he was a fucking dream on a leash 99% of the time. So we would walk a carefully planned route and I would talk to him and pretend I was doing him a favor when I'm sure he knew it was the other way around.

And now I'm crying.

A few days after I sent the link to Wendi Amy sent me a photo of Diggy that she'd come across (below). The subject line of the email was, "Why am I doing this to you?" and the only text was "Because I can't suffer alone." And I wouldn't want her to. I wanted to see the picture. I wanted to see more pictures and it took me about four days to get up the guts to tell her so. As I told Amy, I have a few of them but when you think about the fact that they're all we're ever going to have they just aren't enough. I think I am in possession of all the photos anyone has ever taken of Emily. I can't ever get any more of her. But Diego, not so much.

Today we emailed back and forth about Lord Diggleston's best and worst qualities and she sent me a bunch of photos. Some of them I had seen and loved before and a few I never had. Some day I'll probably tell his whole story (subject to permission of course) but today I just wanted to share some pictures, to have them saved for posterity in searchable format on the almighty internet.

He's a gorgeous boy, don't you think?