Oliver

2017-2020

We don't get home mail delivery and have a mailbox in town, so we only pick up mail two or three times a week. Tonight was like Christmas in October.

Saturday is the anniversary of saying goodbye to little Oliver. 

I'm spending this rainy weekend with Alan Rickman. 

SIgh.

 

 

PABLO NERUDA

"My Dog Has Died"

____________________

My dog has died.

I buried him in the garden

next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,

but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,

his bad manners and his cold nose,

and I, the materialist, who never believed

in any promised heaven in the sky

for any human being,

I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.

Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom

where my dog waits for my arrival

waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,

of having lost a companion

who was never servile.

His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine

withholding its authority,

was the friendship of a star, aloof,

with no more intimacy than was called for,

with no exaggerations:

he never climbed all over my clothes

filling me full of his hair or his mange,

he never rubbed up against my knee

like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,

paying me the attention I need,

the attention required

to make a vain person like me understand

that, being a dog, he was wasting time,

but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,

he'd keep on gazing at me

with a look that reserved for me alone

all his sweet and shaggy life,

always near me, never troubling me,

and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail

as we walked together on the shores of the sea

in the lonely winter of Isla Negra

where the wintering birds filled the sky

and my hairy dog was jumping about

full of the voltage of the sea's movement:

my wandering dog, sniffing away

with his golden tail held high,

face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,

as only dogs know how to be happy

with only the autonomy

of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,

and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,

and that's all there is to it.

A. A. Milne
_____

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
 

YUAN MEI

“Wrapped, surrounded by ten thousand mountains“

__________________

Wrapped, surrounded by ten thousand mountains,
Cut off, no place to go….
Until you’re here, there’s no way to get here.
Once you’re here, there’s no way to go.

DR. SEUSS
_____

Remember me and smile, for it’s better to forget than to remember me and cry.

 

E. M. FORSTER

____________________

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

HELEN KELLER
_____

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.