After we put Dad's beloved German Shepard, Zeus, down, I kept hearing him pant in the middle of night. The poor dog was so old, so tired, and his kidneys were failing so he had to go outside multiple times every night. And since Dad is completely deaf at night, and Mom is oblivious, I ended up being the one to let Zeus in and out whenever he had to relieve himself in the wee hours of the night and morning. There's a long hardwood hall leading from the living room to my bedroom, and Zeus weighed almost 100 pounds so when he walked down the hall, it sounded exactly like a person was walking toward my room. Kind of a creepy in the middle of the night, especially with the panting. I mean, imagine it. You're sound asleep when some tiny part of your brain hears heavy panting and "foot" steps in the hall. Coming toward you! Creeped me out every single time! Even when I knew it was just Zeus! At the end, right before we finally put him out of his misery, Zeus was having to go outside six and seven times every single night. I wasn't sleeping much. Each time I let Zeus back in the house from peeing, he would slowly walk back to his bed in Dad's room, I would slowly nestle back down into my bed and would just start to fall back asleep, when back came Zeus down the hall--walking, panting, walking panting. And that's the same sound I kept hearing, for a couple of weeks, after we put him down. Weird.
I wonder a lot about what sounds I'll hear, or things I'll see, after Mom and Dad are gone. One thing I'd bet good money on that I'll keep hearing is Mom's squeak-whimper breathing. She's a mouth-breather. For some reason we haven't been able to figure out, Mom started breathing out of her mouth after her first back surgery. But it's not just that she breathes through her mouth. When my mouth is open I can't hear anything. So it's not just that her mouth is open, it's the sound she makes when she breathes. You know that sound a dog makes right before it starts to cry? That sort of high-pitched whimper that eventually works its way into a full-fledged dog-cry? That's the sound. Mom makes that sound all the time. Breathing in; breathing out. It's like a squeaky-whimper sound, and it is always in the background. Always. So I can't help but think that I'll probably be hearing that sound long after Mom is gone.
Anyway, that's not the point of today's blog. Today's inspiration happened about two hours ago, driving Mom to a doc appointment. As usual, all was quiet in the Cherokee (it generally is anyway; I'm not much of a talker) except for Mom's squeaky-whimper.
Suddenly, Mom says, "What IS that noise?" She seemed slightly stunned. "What IS that?" she repeated.
"What noise?" I thought maybe she meant the sound of her walker rolling around in the back.
That wasn't it.
"That squeak. It's a squeaky noise."
The walker rolls and creaks but it doesn't really squeak. Still......"You mean your walker? It's rolling around in the back."
"No. That squeak." She paused a bit to form her next thought. "It's from my throat. I can hear it when I breathe."
I said the obvious thing, "That's your breathing Mom. You always make that sound." (I mean, she does. That was okay that I said that, right?)
"Well I've never heard it before. Why do I do that?" she seemed completely baffled by this weird "new" sound coming from her own body.
"Uhhh.......well.......I don't really know why you do that Mom. Maybe because you breathe with your mouth open?"
"oh."
And that was it. She said, "oh" and that was it. We drove the rest of the way in silence, except for the squeaky-whimper.
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