by Rita Rudner
“What was that?” I asked my husband.
“I don’t know,” he replied worriedly.
Bonkers sat down and appeared dizzy. I said, “Bonkers, say thank you,” a certain attention getter. He just stared.
I offered him some spaghetti and he turned it down. That had never happened before. We had just enough time to take him to the vet before I went to work that night.
The vet looked at his gums. They were pale. “This is serious. I’m going to have to keep him here,” he warned.
“How could this happen? He was fine and then with one bark he’s not fine. What’s going on?”
“I’ll run some tests and take some X-rays. Call me in a few hours.”
My husband called the animal hospital later that night. The vet had stayed overtime trying to decipher what had gone wrong with our doggie. Martin listened on the phone quietly and shook his head, indicating things were not going well. He hung up the receiver.
“Dr. Wesley says he’s got a tumor in his chest and his lungs were filled with water and we should call in the morning, but he thinks we might have to put him to sleep.”
I had always thought that I would have time to prepare for this horrible moment, but life doesn’t really care what you think. Out of the blue, my dog, my friend, and my costar were all about to leave me. Martin called the animal hospital the next morning. Dr. Wesley had slept in the office that night to keep an eye on Bonkers. He was no better, but no worse. Martin couldn’t tolerate me crying all the way to the animal hospital, so he decided to drive down and look at Bonkers himself before making the final decision. I waited by the phone.
“I’m bringing him home,” my husband said. “He wagged his tail when he saw me, and I just have to bring him home…even if it’s only for a few days.”
Amazingly, Bonkers lived for two more years after that episode. He never performed again, but he did accompany me to the theater at least twice a week to visit his friends backstage. It wasn’t an easy two years. I had a shelf in the kitchen I called “Bonkers’s pharmacy,” and his pill schedule was rigorous. Among various medications, he was on a high dose of diuretics, which meant he had to be walked every two hours. We live in a high-rise, so that was a challenge, but the upside was I didn’t have to go to the gym. I just walked my dog twelve times a day. I don’t know if we did the right thing in not putting him down when the vet advised it, but I do know I had my dog with me for two extra years, and although he was never young Bonkers again, he seemed happy.
My husband and I made a vow that if we ever felt he was suffering, we would have to be brave. One day I came into the bathroom, where Bonkers had been sleeping on his favorite rug, to take him for his walk, and he was having some sort of seizure. I called Martin and we knelt beside him and tried to calm him down. When Bonkers came to, he was panting heavily and appeared dizzy.
I showed him his leash and he looked away. He refused to move out of the bathroom. It was as if he was telling us he’d had enough.
We called our vet and he came to the house and gave our beloved dog a shot of morphine. The wild panting began to subside and Bonkers began to snore. It was a really great, deep snore, the kind of snore you snore when every bit of you is relaxed and you haven’t a worry in the world. It was a truly wonderful noise. We wrapped Bonkers in one of my daughter’s blankets and took him to the animal hospital to be put to sleep.
This is the first year in thirteen years that Bonkers will not be on our Christmas card. All of our friends know he’s gone, but I know they’ll be upset all the same. Some people would think that Bonkers got lucky when we saw him in the show and took him in after his car accident, but I think we were the ones who were really lucky, because he was our dog.
Endgame
ONCE YOU’VE FINISHED A BOOK, YOU THEN HAVE to name it. This takes just as long as it did to write the book. The following are some of the titles that were under consideration. If there’s one that you particularly prefer, please feel free to alter the front of this book accordingly. (Only do this if you have purchased the book. I would feel terrible if I was responsible for your arrest in a bookshop.)
Help! My Birthday Cake’s on Fire
Aged to Imperfection
I’m Still Hot (It Just Comes in Flashes)
If Fifty Is the New Thirty, I’m Thirty-Three
I Won’t Blog, Don’t Ask Me
Artificially Hip
That Botox Has Sailed
I Remember James Taylor When He Had Hair
Half a Century Is Better than None
Ritalosophy
I’m Not Over the Hill—I Just Can’t Climb It
350 in Dog Years
Suddenly Fifty
Older than Springtime, Younger than Angela Lansbury
I Remember What’s-His-Name
Acknowledgments
I’D LIKE TO THANK my publisher, Shaye Areheart, for commissioning this book; my agent, Alan Nevins, for reminding Shaye that she’d commissioned this book, and my husband, Martin Bergman, for reminding me to write this book.
About the Author
RITA RUDNER is a celebrated and award-winning comedian, actress, screenwriter, presenter, and author. Past books include the bestselling Naked Beneath My Clothes and the novels Tickled Pink and Turning the Tables.
ALSO BY RITA RUDNER
Turning the Tables
Naked Beneath My Clothes
Tickled Pink
Rita Rudner’s Guide to Men
Copyright © 2008 by Ritmar Productions Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
HARMONY BOOKS is a registered trademark and the Harmony Books colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rudner, Rita
I still have it . . . I just can’t remember where I put it : confessions of a fiftysomething / Rita Rudner.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. American wit and humor. I. Title.
PN6165.R83 2008
818'.5402—dc22 2007048633
eISBN: 978-0-307-44947-4
v3.0