Learning to Walk Alone
Seeing a squirrel feel safe enough to come up on my deck made me cry.
One of my friends’ mom died the other day. Another lost her 50-year-old husband to cancer last year. My parents have been gone for years. It can be sad getting to that age where loss of loved ones becomes more common. It also seems like the older you get and the more loss you see, death seems a little less scary, because a part of your heart has already gone.
Every day I remind myself how lucky I am to have made it this far without having lost young relatives or close friends. I’m grateful that my child is healthy and so are my brothers and sisters. I appreciate having been able to be a pet parent, one at a time, two dogs with about five years in between.
My sweet, faithful dog took his last breath the Friday afternoon before Memorial Day. He was our baby and spent close to a quarter of my life with me after joining our two-person family when my child was in middle school.
I’d rather be sweeping up thick black winter dog fur on stuff in my house, which used to blow off in tufts all summer before growing back thick and curly in the fall. Now, right at the beginning of fur-flying season, the places where he spent the most time are tidy and fur-free. I don’t like it.
