One kind of coming of age experience is feeling loss. I've felt loss quite a few times growing up. One time when I was seven years old and in the second grade i was hit with some drastic news that would change my childhood. It was one day after school and my grandmother had come to pick me and my little sister Victoria up from school. She told me that my dog Tabu was very sick and she couldn't move. My grandparents had Tabu since she was a puppy [ also since i was born]. Tabu was a pitbull and I loved that dog more than anything in the world, would do anything for her. When I got home later that day I recall walking into my hallway and seeing TabuI there on her blanket looking so....normal. So I called out to her and she didn't move, she usually came running to me, but this time she just sat there wagging her tail and whining. I walked over to her and she tried to jump up to give me kisses and she fell back against the wall. My grandmother later called the vet and they came to do a house call, they said that she had a blood clot from her lower back all the way to her legs and she would never walk again. My family couldn't afford to get her one of the doggie wheelchairs for her and we couldn't see her in pain so we had no choice to put her down. But at the moment I didn't know that. My grandmother lied to me and told me that they gave her to this guy that lived next door and he was going to take her to go live with other dogs like her who would all have their own little wheelchairs and she would run and play, do normal dog stuff. But as time went on I kept nagging my grandma to let me go visit her and she broke the news to me that Tabu was dead and that she had died a long time ago. For weeks I couldn't bear to look at her or talk to her because it hurt so much that she could lie to me like that. But now that I'm older i understand that what she did was for the best and i probably would have done the same thing. Tabu will always be in my heart.
-RIP TABU WE LOVE YOU-
