I'm no longer a bird lady :(

This morning when I got up and went to feed Lance, he was still asleep.  Usually he is awake and yelling long before I get up.  I brought the cage into the bathroom and he didn't want to come out. I got his medicine into him but he really didn't fight much and I had a really bad feeling.  I fed him and he went right back into the cage, no kisses or playing.  We went to eat and when we got home he was in the corner of the cage on the floor.  We stayed close to him all day.  He slept and didn't want to wake up.  He didn't eat or drink and his poops were very few and solid white (not like they should be).  Around 7:30 Willy called upstairs that Lance was dying.  He had fallen off the perch.  I took the cage into the bathroom and took him out.  I held him and we petted him and talked to him and gave him kisses.  He was just lying limp in my hands, breath rasping, feet unable to grasp.  He kept opening his beak and moving his tongue and I'd like to think he was trying to make kissy noises back to us.  He kept his eyes on me.  His final seizure was very gentle and fairly quick and then he was gone. I got him exactly 21 years ago.

Yesterday he was happy.  He was talking to me and to the cats, making crazy kissy noises and complaining that we were eating in front of him--he liked people food.

His kidneys had been going for months; he'd been on medicine every day since May and been super-hydrated at the vet's three times.  I knew it was coming.  And that it would hurt.  I feel like my chest is crushed.

I don't have any birds anymore.   What will I call the bird room?  

(cross posted to my Alzheimer's blog)
added later:
The day Lance died was 12 Eb in the Mayan calendar. Eb is the road, the path. We all follow many roads and paths, and even that day I recognized that my 21-year path as a bird owner, and Lance's life path, were ending. I am hoping that this is the end of death in my life, for a while, the end of lack, loss and limitation, and the beginning of a new path of prosperity and peace.
I just came across this poem online.

All Is Well


Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by my old familiar name,
Speak to me in the easy way which you always used
Put no difference in your tone,
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was,
Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It it the same as it ever was, there is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near,
Just around the corner.
All is well.
By Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918)
Canon of St Paul's Cathedral