Another good-bye.
Bob and I are lucky to live in a close-knit neighborhood of 17 homes that included seven well-loved and personality-filled pets. Until the end of July. Since then, we’ve lost two of those dear animals, our own cat Rose, and Simon, today. Simon was at our neighborhood backyard Labor Day gathering yesterday, but he clearly was not up to playfulness. It was time to say good-bye. But oh, my, so hard. So hard. They really are family.
There is some consolation in knowing and reminding ourselves how very well he was loved, respected, and treated by his humans.
“Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old — or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.” -Mary Oliver
Maira Kalman writes in Beloved Dog, “When I go out for a walk, there is so much that makes me happy to be alive. Breathing. Not thinking. Observing. I am grateful beyond measure to be part of it all. There are people, of course, heroic and heartbreaking, going about their business in splendid fashion.
“There are the discarded items — chairs, sofas, tables, umbrellas, shoes — also heroic for having lived life in happy (or unhappy) homes.
There are trees. Glorious and consoling. Changing with the seasons. Reminders that all things change. And change again. There are flowers, birds, babies, buildings.
I love all of these. But above all, I am besotted by dogs.”
-Maira Kalman, the author of a very good book, Beloved Dog.
“A passionate reader, Kalman communes with literary history’s famous dog-lovers: Kafka, for whom dogs (along with books) were the only light amid his existential darkness, Gertrude Stein, whose French poodle named Basket was central to her daily routine, and E.B. White, literature’s greatest champion of dogs.”
I think you might very much like this story of E.B.White’s love for his dog
Not available at this time at Powells nor Third Place Books. I always try them first.