It's ending soon.

Stamford is going to die by no later than Friday. Just typing that kills me, but it's true -- my most fervent wish is that he'll die sometime in the next day or two so I won't have to play a part in it, but I know it will come to that. When we got back from New York (by way of Delaware, where we moved the last of my possessions from my apartment of five years into storage), he'd lost all remaining use of his back legs and couldn't even balance to stand up. This morning he was having trouble even propping his front end up.  He's fought for a long time, far longer than anyone thought he could, but it would require a miraculous and lengthy history of wanton malpractice to save him now (meaning that the vet would have to notice that they'd just missed something in test after test after test and he'd been completely curable with a shot or a pill all along).  Having called around to pet cemeteries, it doesn't seem I can bury him for under $3,000. (This only adds to the frustration we've experienced on the house search -- we put an offer in a week ago that was over asking price and didn't even get a call back to tell us it was rejected for another offer.)

So I'm not sure what to do. I don't believe in cremation. I think the idea is absolutely awful and I recoil at the thought, but I also have no place to bury him and even I can't justify spending $3,000 for such a place just because of my irrational fear of cremation (this should be noted by anyone ever making funeral arrangements for me -- although I respect that my first choice -- being placed in a glass tube like Lenin -- is probably out of the question for me, cremation ought not appear in your playbook). Part of me wonders if I could just go deep into Rock Creek Park and find someplace, but I have no doubt I'd manage to compound my current miseries by getting arrested for doing so.  So I'm out of ideas and can barely hold it together to get through the week anyway.