Sunday

My grandma's dog died today. I'm not sad for the dog. I loved her but she had been weakening for a while. My grandma is depressed, she had been long before Chela died. She takes medication and used to say that after chela died then she'd wanna leave too. I'm not afraid that she'd kill herself, her religious beliefs would keep her away from something like that. I'm afraid that she'll lose the reason to live that we all have. Chela meant more to her than anything else. Imagine living out your elderly life just waiting to die. I think we want to send her back to Ecuador. She likes it there, and Chela would only ever let her visit for a couple of weeks at a time. 

What amazes me is how strong my grandmother pretends to be. When she called yesterday saying that She needed to bring Chela to the hospital there wasn't even the slightest crack in her voice when she said that she'd probably have to put her down. I know that she cried and it was very public, but that was only after. Sadness in our family is frowned upon. We can't afford to be sad for longer than is allowed. And what is allowed is a couple of minutes after someone dies. Any other sadness you feel is meant for bedroom pillow after everyone else has gone to bed. The illusion of being strong is more important than having actual strength. I didn't cry yet. I'm still waiting for the whole event to hit me. The fact that the only animal that I ever knew at a personal level was dead still doesn't feel real yet. I wonder if they'll be a funeral. We wouldn't waste our money on a funeral. Not when the dog's hospital bills are already in the hundreds. But if there was, would I cry there? Would we follow our tradition of throwing a party around the open casket as we celebrate the dog's life? Would that be weird? Now that I think about, my family is heartless. We saw Chela as therapy for my grandmother. Give the old lady a companion so she won't bother us about how lonely she is. So would the funeral just be my aunts and uncles huddled around my grandmother as she burst into tears as everyone in the back would think to themselves that they saw this coming. Chela didn't mean anything to my mother and father. They hated her because she would bring fur into the house when she'd visit. To me and my sister and my cousin, that dog was our childhood. We'd beg to see grandma just so that we could play with Chela. 

Chela is dead now. My grandmother's mental state is still unknown to me and probably will stay that way for a while because we don't talk about our feeling very much in our family. That was basically my Sunday. That and a cartoon superman movie. Those always seem to make me feel better.