Last night, Thursday, was the first night since Mango’s death that I didn’t go to bed after drinking a bunch. I sat there on the couch by myself after work, following a brief visit from Elle, and I ate some ramen, drank water, watched a couple of Steve Donoghue’s videos and went to bed at 11. Felt sad. Dreamt that I found binders in my grandfather’s home office with all of my blog posts in them. Then I dreamt that I was on a boat that sank in front of the docks of a frathouse and I had Mango with me in the water and we were being chased by a shark and I had to carry him above the surface cuz he was too tired to swim and I was kicking so frantically…
This morning I looked at his things and debated what to do with them. The broken carrier, the musky little bed, the food bowl. The food itself.
When you’ve got nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Feel like there should be some kind of ceremony about their disposal. Cormac McCarthy said something about conjuring ceremonies up out of the air when you have none. Add a sense of purpose to things. Consecrate its personal meaning.
Do I bring a candle with me to the trash chute?
Thousand Movie Project 
Just saw this and am so sorry.
when my cat died (this was 10 years ago now) I donated a lot of his things to a local no-kill shelter, especially the unopened food. I only saved his favorite toy. That helped a lot; I wasn’t swamped in his things, but I hadn’t just thrown them out; they were doing good somewhere in the world.
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That’s a wonderful alternative! It turns out, coincidentally, that my roommate’s dog, who’d never tried my own dog’s food, really likes it. So it’s being put to good use at least in that respect. Mango had very few teeth (toy poodles tend to start losing them at around 12) and wasn’t interested in toys, so I don’t have anything left over from that. The carrier was pretty broken down, so I threw it out, and his bed was several years old and pretty much held together only by strings, so I did throw the two of them away. I’ve still got his bowl, though, and I think I’ll be hanging onto that.
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