My buddy The Girl Who has a tough one right now :(
Nobody ever forgets their dog. I can live to 200*, and I'll remember Gladys. And I only had her for a year and a half. I had Strummer (or, as the vet called him, "Joe Strummer Wilson") for less than a year, and that was 17 years ago, and to this day whenever I see a basset hound I throw it a Jedi-mind trick, wondering if it's him and I've found him again.
Hmm. Apparently, like a woman, I can't keep a dog. Interesting.
Friends, we forget. Girlfriends, lovers, even family sometimes. But not dogs. You'll forget your own goddam name before you forget your dogs.
She'll get through it, because that's what people do.When faced with real heartbreak, it's amazing what a person can not only handle, but handle with grace. And obviously I have nothing to offer, obviously I'm struggling to find a joke to place here; but if a few Xmastime vibes sent her way will help, let's see what we can do.
* probably won't
We only had Gladys for about 18 months before she got milk disease and died. I remember coming home from school and seeing that she had died, and my brother and I started digging the hole on our side of the dirt road that cut between us and the field behind our house. It was the beginning of September, about 100 degrees, and the dirt was cracked and dried out from the heat so that it was like trying to dig through concrete. Choking on dust and burning from the sun I finally flung the shovel to the ground, fell to my knees and shook my fist at the sky “Hear me now, God!!! It is hell to be poor!!!” Actually, I think that was from A Day No Pigs Would Die, but I feel like something dramatic and emotional is more appropriate than the silence that was in the air the day we laid our only dog into the ground. Seems like any young boy’s dog deserves that much.
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