If you ever
love an animal, there are three days in your life you will always remember ...
The first
is a day, blessed with happiness, when you bring home your young new friend. You
may have spent weeks deciding on a breed. You may have asked numerous opinions
of many vets, or done long research in finding a breeder. Or, perhaps in a
fleeting moment, you may have just chosen that silly looking mutt in a shelter
simply because something in its eyes reached your heart. But when you bring
that chosen pet home, and watch it explore, and claim its special place in your
hall or front room, and when you feel it brush against you for the first time,
it instills a feeling of pure love you will carry with you through the many
years to come.
The second
day will occur eight or nine or ten years later. It will be a day like any
other … routine and unexceptional. But, for a surprising instant, you will look
at your longtime friend and see age where you once saw youth. You will see slow
deliberate steps where you once saw energy. And you will see sleep where you
once saw activity. So you will begin to adjust your friend's diet, and you may
add a pill or two to her food. And you may feel a growing fear deep within
yourself, which bodes of a coming emptiness. And you will feel this uneasy
feeling, on and off, until the third day finally arrives.
And on this day, if your friend and God have not decided for you, you will be faced with
making a decision of your own on behalf of your lifelong friend, and with the
guidance of your own deepest spirit. But whichever way your friend eventually
leaves you, you will feel as alone as a single star in the dark night.
If you are
wise, you will let the tears flow as freely and as often as they must. And if
you are typical, you will find that not many in your circle of family or
friends will be able to understand your grief, or comfort you.
But if you
are true to the love of the pet you cherished through the many joy-filled
years, you may find that a soul, a bit smaller in size than your own, seems to
walk with you, at times, during the lonely days to come. And at moments when
you least expect anything out of the ordinary to happen, you may feel something
brush against your leg very, very lightly. And looking down at the place where
your dear, perhaps dearest, friend used to lay, you will remember those three
significant days.
The memory
will most likely be painful, and leave an ache in your heart. As time passes
the ache will come and go as if it has a life of its own. You will both reject
it and embrace it, and it may confuse you. If you reject it, it will depress
you. If you embrace it, it will deepen you. Either way, it will still be an
ache.
But there will be, I assure you, a fourth day when, along with the memory of your pet, and piercing through the heaviness in your heart, there will come a realization that belongs only to you. It will be as unique and strong as our relationship with each animal we have loved, and lost. This realization takes the form of a Living Love. Like the heavenly scent of a rose that remains after the petals have wilted, this Love will remain and grow, and be there for us to remember.
It is a
Love we have earned. It is the legacy our pets leave us when they go. And it is
a gift we may keep with us as long as we live. It is a Love which is ours
alone. And until we ourselves leave, perhaps to join our beloved pets, it is a
Love that we will always possess.
*****
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