Damn, I cried last night. And not just over the episode of Intervention I watched with Megan H. the heroin addict whose parents were the WORST, though that got me too.

Nope, it was all because Fiona Apple’s dog is dying.

Fiona and her pooch

I first heard about this on People.com (of course) where it was announced that Fiona was postponing her South American tour to take care of her ailing dog Janet. I WILL admit that I MIGHT have rolled my eyes a bit. People and their goddamn pets! I thought to myself. They’re not PEOPLE.

These were the only pets I had growing up, and a turtle names Ali Baba who died like a week after I got him.

And then I read the letter.

And then I cried, and those tears fertilized the cold hard dirt by my heart, and then it blossomed.

I’ve posted the handwritten letter that Fiona scanned to Facebook below (you can also read it at the link above), but here are some of the most touching parts that actually made me cry:

Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact . . every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head . . . She’s my best friend and my mother and my daughter, my benefactor, and she’s the one who taught me what love is . . Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life, that keeps us feeling terrified and alone. I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time.

I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments. I need to do my damnedest to be there for that. Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I’ve ever known. When she dies.

So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and reveling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel.

And I am asking for your blessing.I’ll be seeing you.
Love, Fiona

Damn, Fiona. Thank God I’m not wearing mascara.

Keeping you and Janet in my prayers.