They tell me the day the paramedics wheeled me out of the house you fought your brother to get out of his room so that you could race down the stairs to protect me.
I smile when I think about your steadfast loyalty and undying love. You were so very close to end of your time with us and yet you roused yourself because you knew no other way.
For that and 1092,928,282 other reasons we loved you as you loved us. You hung on long enough to see me come home.
I think I heard you sniffing at the bathroom door. I think I heard you while I lay on the floor bleeding out, but I am not entirely certain.
What I know is that when I pulled myself up off of the floor it was the hardest thing I have ever done. I didn’t know then that almost half of my blood was gone but I thought about you.
I thought about you while I lay in that hospital bed and trusted you’d watch over everyone.
But now you are gone and the house is so quiet.
Who Will You Send?
That first night without I told everyone that you would send another dog. I said that he or she would find us because that has always been my experience, you and those who came before you send another dog to join the family.
Can’t say when he or she will arrive, only that it will happen.
The day I tore the tendon in my arm I came home and looked for you. I had planned on telling you about how crazy this aging thing is.
I thought about all the stories and secrets I shared with you. I remember telling how strange it can be to be so very close with someone and then have them just disappear.
“We started out strangers and became best friends and then turned into strangers again, but this time with memories.”
You wagged your tail and leaned against me. I remember wondering how you seemed to understand exactly what I had said and meant.
I said if you had learned how to speak English it was time for you to speak but of course you didn’t. I smiled and said that was why I shared my secrets with you–no one will ever know.
It reminds me of how we can love people and places even if they are imperfect. It is unfair to demand perfection of people and places yet sometimes we do so even though we know they will never meet the mark and neither will we.
It Just Can’t Last
Got Johnny singing Ghost Riders In The Sky while I work on mapping out some future plans that I started thinking about when I wrote about what didn’t happen on Hampshire road in I Stopped Trying To Tear Down The Walls.
Got momentarily sidetracked with the ultrasound on my liver and the endoscopy last week but only because I was preoccupied with wondering what it would show.
Truth is I still don’t have all of the details because I am waiting for biopsy results to come back and focused on 1,282 other things that require my attention.
Talked to the boys about some of it and one said to me, ‘you know that is a lot.’
Nodded my head, grunted and muttered ‘it just can’t last’ because it can’t. I have been through more challenging times and dealt with more crap than now.
There is quite a bit going on, but I’ll get to the other side. Not worried about what the biopsy will or won’t show because I am more focused on trying to figure out how much weight I can lift with my right arm.
I find myself especially focused on it because of what happened to the left arm. Find myself focused on feelings that I might have otherwise ignored and am consequently a little more cautious.
Got less than a week before I see my surgeon again and find out if I can dispense of the giant brace upon my arm.
The arm doesn’t look like that anymore, got a small scab that will likely fall off any day now and in a short time you won’t know the doc sliced me open.
But that brace on the right reminds me that we’re not at the end of this path yet.
That brace must weigh about two pounds and it sticks out. I don’t mean that in ‘it is a conversation starter or catches the eyes of others’ but in clearance. As in sometimes I pass by things and forget that I am wearing something that adds a 1/2 inch more to the space I need to pass by unencumbered.
So I walk through the house and sometimes bang into things and expect to see my furriest kid look up at me in surprise.
Expect him to give me a look asking why I keep doing that and prepare to make a snarky remark about aging being a pain-in-the-ass.
Sometimes I come back from the gym and look for him so I can tell him about my progress. Sometimes I take off the brace and feel my inner elbow on both sides and smile because that newly repaired tendon feels more solid.
The doc told me that after the surgery some people say those newly repaired arms feel better than their partner. I am beginning to see how that can be.
So I wander through this quiet house thinking about the future thinking about and planning for the future that is coming.
Wondering how long we’ll wait for that new family member but certain they’ll find us because somewhere those that came before have told them about us. Perhaps they haven’t been given directions but I am sure they have instructions on how to use scent and instinct to find us.
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