WRITE A SHORT PIECE ABOUT A SIMPLE MISTAKE YOU MADE

 

A MISTAKE

We were pretty sure it was time to say goodbye. I felt rushed as if maybe we could save him if we got him there quickly enough. Deep down I knew it wasn’t true but that was my state of mind at the time. “Somebody find me a knife!” I yelled. I was going to cut the lid off of this box so he could be comfortable in the car on the way to the vet.

 “I don’t know where one is,” my oldest daughter said softly as she looked at him, her eyes wide with fear of the unknown.

 What in the hell had happened to all of our knives? I swear they went missing every other day and today I really needed one, I couldn’t cut the tape with the bottom of a fork like I could food. Running into the kitchen I also came up empty so I ran back out to the living room with the sharp metal lid of a formula can.

“Don’t use that. You’ll cut yourself,” my husband said in an irritated voice.

 But I was desperate. We’d had him for thirteen years, our first pet as a couple. “Hold on Cheese Wiz mommy will make you a comfy bed,” I said to our orange tabby, Caesar, as I set to work cutting the duct tape off of the box. Only I didn’t hear the satisfying snap of the tape but the pain of my own voice as the lid sliced through my finger.

 “You shouldn’t have used the formula can lid,” my husband said angrily. “I’ll drop you off at the ER while I take him to the vet.”

“Yeah, okay,” I agreed as tears crept out of my eyes.

 As everyone got ready to go I said a quiet goodbye to our beautiful boy. I wanted to hold him one last time but with my hand bleeding profusely, it just wasn’t possible. I now KNEW that I would never see him again. And I didn’t. I wish I could have been there for my husband when he said goodbye to the pet that had chosen him on one fateful day, but instead, because of a stupid mistake, I was getting my finger sewed up at the ER.