Kilo's Sacrifice

Kilo was an incredible animal. A golden Collie-Shepherd mix, that I had gotten when he was six weeks old. He was exceptionally intelligent. He had been with me during my psychedelic years, he went to the War protests with me, the festivals, the gigs, the tours...he was in Chicago and Detroit with me, in fact, we were pretty much inseperable. I could look at him and know what he was feeling or wanted, and he could do the same with me. As crazy as it sounds, I think that during the years I was doing the psychedelics, we got to a place that was very intuitive and empathetic, almost telepathic, and we loved each other unconditionally. He had become more than a dog to me...he had become a best friend. I remember he always "sang" along with the synthesizer part of Emerson,Lake,and Palmer's Lucky Man...every single time he heard it. To this day, every time I hear the song...I think of him. After the intervention had failed, he became, in many ways, my only friend, at least the only one that wanted to be around me. But I was in the throes of active heroin addiction. I didn't have the time or the energy to take long walks with him, play with him, talk with him...I became what all heroin addicts become...selfish and self-obsessed. And I was emotionally absent. One morning, I woke up after crashing at a customer's house...Kilo was asleep at the foot of the bed. He woke up, jumped into the bed with me, sat on my chest, looked straight into my eyes, gave me a couple of licks...howled one long, pitiful wail, and died in my arms. He was four years old. To this day, I have never felt such profound anguish. I knew he couldn't stand seeing me destroy myself. He couldn't take the change in me... it was more than he could live with, and in the only way he knew how, he begged me to stop what I was doing to myself. He died of a broken heart... I cried hysterically for two days. The grief from the murder that I hadn't allowed myself to feel came out of me, too. And I realized I had just lost a huge part of myself. I was totally devastated. But I swore I wouldn't let him die in vain. The next day, I drove to Hartford to sign up for a Methadone detox program. They told me there was a one week waiting list...but I knew I had hit a bottom...and it was time to ask for help....