Walk Away And Start Over Again

We got a collie puppy this week.  In some ways, the decision came out of the blue, but not really.  For years, after our sheltie Ginger had to be put down, my wife would raise the possibility of getting another dog.  Purely hypothetical of course.  Sort of along the lines of “wouldn’t it be nice…?” 

“Yeah, right,” I would say.  I would go into the list of why another dog wouldn’t be nice at all.  The kids were grown and out of the house now.  We don’t need the responsibility, or to be tied down, etc etc etc. 

The fact that I am standing in the yard with a pooper scooper, watching the equivalent of a fur ball with legs do somersaults trying to tackle a tennis ball, is testimony on the mysterious ways the heart unfolds.  Mysterious even to itself.

It was exactly 10 years ago in 2001 I had to have Ginger put down.  What a year that was.  My father died unexpectedly in June, and everything after that was just a kind of deepening numbness radiating outward.  September 11 happened.  The towers fell, the Pentagon ablaze.  The grief I was already feeling took on a national dimension and then became eminently personal again as Ginger’s medical condition which had been going down for months, finally could not continue.  It was time.  Everyone knew it. 

I remember walking to the car alone after signing the papers at the vet, holding her red leather collar still buckled and dragging the lead behind me.   The consoling thought I had at the time was that at least she was out of pain and I would never have to go through this again. 

It’s funny how that day springs to mind now as our collie puppy Prince, proudly looks up at me from the grass, the tennis ball in his teeth.  I laugh, and the laugh comes from the same physical place the sobs came from.  In that moment, it is all the same.  The laughter, the tears, I guess the last ten years have taught me again how you can’t banish one from your life without the other.  The heart needs to love, and loving is the most reckless thing a heart can do.  I reach down and take the ball from Prince and roll it in the grass, starting the game all over again.  Thank God.