Death of a Friend

Death always seems so far away, until it’s scheduled for tomorrow.

I write this knowing I have a little over 24 hours left with my first dog, child, and son, whom I call a son because I love him in the way he taught me how to love.

His life depended entirely on mine; and now, I have come to understand, mine has ferociously depended on his.

My fifteen-year journey with bunk started in January 2010:

We tried so hard to eat healthy:

But a staggering amount of donuts and pie had other plans:

When those were in short supply, we discovered substitutes:

Bunk made friends easily:

And at some point along the way morphed into a lion:

Life is neither all misery nor joy, but bittersweet; all joys and miseries contain the one within the other. It is always just a matter of time.

But my God, how much delight bunk summoned into existence for so many along the way —like a furball magician who never grew tired of performing the same damn trick over and over again: fetching a stick but instead of a stick it was your heart he brought back to you, no matter where you last left it.

I just looked over at him now, laying on his blanket outside, four feet away. He raised his head to look back at me; such a simple gesture and my tears are back— salty, full of grief and profound heartbusting gratitude.

It also feels like a tremendous relief to know I can cry like this, to know I can love another creature so fucking much.

But lest you think bunk was merely a good-time friend, he was my companion through much human heartache and performed his duty as ring-bearer with consummate professionalism:

There are quasi-infinite more pictures I can share but am wary of overwhelming with sentimentality. What all of the pictures seem to capture, in one way or another, is that life —even fifteen years of it — is but a fleeting moment and is ours not because we deserve it but because we live in a field of grace that is beyond all the words I know.

Grace, lucky for us, is simple.

Run through the fields:

Don’t wait:

Catch morning sunlight:

Let yourself be carried by others:

Know where you come from:

Take in a view:

Don’t be afraid to get wet:

Learn to rest in each moment:

The wind is now blowing bunk’s tail’s fur. I’m an absolute slobbering mess, so let this be what it is.

A Note

by Wislawa Szymborksa

Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on sand,
rise on wings;

to be a dog,
or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain
from everything it’s not;

to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to seek the least of all possible mistakes;

An extraordinary chance
to remember for a moment
a conversation held with the lamp switched off;

and if only once
to stumble on a stone,
end up soaked in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;

and to keep on not knowing
something important