Mandy

It's Sunday Morning, I've been up for a couple of hours now, and everyone else is still asleep. Not sure why, but I just got to reflecting about things, and my thoughts turned to Mandy, our little yorkie we lost about this same time last summer. And since this is the closest thing I've ever had to a journal I wanted to write about it here. For those of you that know the story or are heartless non-animal lovers here is your exit opportunity.

My birthday is July 6th. Every year our vacation usually falls around this time. Last summer was a little "vacation crazy", we had sent Dominic, one of our older boys, to Europe for a month, Holly had girls camp, and Bill had wanted to do a cruise. Since we had already been to the Carribbean a few times, and a European cruise in the summer did not interest me at all with all the tourist and the heat, so, we decided, we would go on an Alaskan Cruise. Everyone was excited but me & Dominic, who decided he did not want to go, and would just stay here and recoperate from his trip. Now, I AM NOT an outdoors-y kind of girl. I mean, I always end up having a good time, because that's how I choose to be, but nature is not my first choice. So to kind of balance things, Bill took me to NYC for a few days. We had a girl from our church come stay with the kids, and her family lives just down the road from us. She's stayed with them several times when we've gone away, the kids LOVE her and so everyone was SUPER excited. As usual, we told them they could e-mail us as much as they wanted but to limit cell calls to an emergency only basis. (to be honest, the first "I miss youuuuu call is kind of sweet, but every hour gets a lee-tle bit old. I know, I'm mean & heartless)

So, Bill & I are in NYC having a GREAT time. We get the nightly e-mails from the kids, and all is well. Until Sunday. We were going to see Mama Mia for the 2:00 matinee, so that morning we got up and decided we would go do some shopping for the kids beforehand. We went and got the girls some things from American Girl Place, then went to Nintendo World for Aus and was just having a really nice time. We stopped back by the hotel to drop off our bags before the performance and as soon as we open the door to the room we see the red light flashing on the phone. Bill goes to check it and I pick up my phone to see if there are any missed calls. There was 20. (We had BOTH forgot our phones in the room.) I look at Bills, and he also has 17 missed calls.

My heart was racing and I was in complete panic mode.

We called home, and Emmy answered the phone and the first words she said was "Mandy's dead"

She cried, I cried, we couldn't be there to comfort them, it was very hard. She handed the phone over to the babysitter's mom who had come to the house. The mom proceeded to tell me what happened.

On Saturday night one of the kids decided to take a bath, when they were done they forgot to drain it. On Sunday morning every one was up and getting ready for church, Emmy went to take a shower and when she opened the door, she saw Mandy, dead and floating in the water. Mandy was Emmy's dog.

It was one of the saddest experiences of my life thus far.


NOTE: Since this IS my blog, I can't leave on such a serious note. I try to find humor in any & all situations that happen in my life. That is THE ONLY way I can cope. In this situation the humor came from an unlikely source, my great-niece Savannah (Shanell's daughter) On that Sunday, since we were not able to come home, the "greatest sister EVER" came and got my kids and took them to her house for Sunday dinner and to get their minds off of things. While they were there, they kind of had a "tribute party" in rememberance of Mandy. They wrote notes and drew pictures, I tried to find Savannah's picture, but it is packed up so I'll just have to describe.

8.5x11 piece of white cardstock.
Black marker to draw shape of bathtub.
Brown marker to draw dog in bathtub.
RED marker to draw "splotches" around dog.
Caption coming from dog that says "HELP ME!"

She was 5, and it came from her heart and it was the sweetest thing.