Marcos went away today. Marcos went to rejoin Ruth and Walker today.

Marcos loved being picked up and petted but he would bite you if you put him down!

When I returned to Guatemala to retire five years ago I immediately went to visit my friend Ruth N.  Ruth was in her 70´s and was a retired Social Worker (MSW) from St. Louis, Missouri.  Ruth had spent her entire professional career working with Prostitutes (often drug or alcohol addicts)  and had decided to spend her final years working with kids in one of the small aldeas near Antigua.  Ruth, a widow and a Chrismatic Catholic,  had been married twice but never had kids and didn´t know anything about them she told me.  So, Ruth spent the next decade and a half being a strong influence for all things positive and possible in a community in Central America where few families could afford much more than tortillas and beans every day-- Ruth became a person who was a positive, yet modest, force in the lives of hundreds of children over the years she lived in Santa Inez...she was a good neighbor indeed and well loved. 
Shortly after I returned and renewed my friendship with Ruth she fell ill and after a few months died...her friends honored her with a funeral mass at la Merced and her neighbors shoulder carried her coffin through the cemetery and up to a fifth tier crypt in the Public Section of the Antigua Cemetery--exactly as she may have wished, she was well cared for right up through the end of her life. 

Marcos of Ruth

Ruth had two dogs.  One dog was the son of my brown and white Cocker Spaniel and his name was ¨Walker¨...Walker was a black and white beauty who also had gold eyebrows and was born when I had lived in Guatemala almost a decade earlier--a real dazzler and much loved by Ruth´s other dog,  a rescue animal, named Marcos.  Marcos was a Peekeneese/King Charles Spaniel mix and full of macho ¨attitude¨... what a pair made as they joined up with the other doggers at my house to romp on endlessly after Ruth´s death.   A couple of years after they came to live with us, Walker fell ill one night.  The next day I took him to the vet and he died on the examining table (later it was discovered he had a terrible malignant tumor).  So, onward we all continued to go and Marcos adjusted once again to another great loss in his life...first Ruth and then Walker...his best friends.

Marcos was quite popular amongst friends and guests at our house throughout the remainder of his life but he clearly was slowing down in the last two years...his strut and tail wagging faded and his attention became directed into a world of his own understanding-- Marcos was becoming senile.  So it was that Marcos lived in his own world for the last year of his life--always a good eater even though he became a very good sleeper also and there were many times that I thought he had slipped away from us--but no, up until yesterday Marcos was very much alive until he simply couldn´t get up anymore...he cried, and cried with great pain all through last night and this morning Dr. Hugo his longtime physician took the pain away to stay...we were there, we saw Marcos go away today...Marcos doesn´t live here anymore as he´s gone to rejoin Ruth and Walker again...he did it with his eyes wide open and didn´t even tremble or cry.

Lord hear my prayer for Marcos, Walker and Ruth and their happy reunion today.