Not normal are we

The photo at left is one of Leo and me taken on March 11, 2019, and shared to Instagram as well as here on the blog, where I explained in more detail what was going on. I began the Instagram caption, “So, Leo is clearly not an ordinary dog”. Leo is still not an ordinary dog, but he no longer sits on the back of my chair. Now, he sits on the back of the sofa, looks out the front window, and barks at anyone who dares go past his house. I don’t speak dog, but I thing he’s shouting, “You shall not pass!” Also, he now eats like a normal dog.

The thing that always strikes me about that post three years ago is that only six months later, everything would change. Ten months after this post, the dogs and I would be living in Hamilton without our Nigel. Not quite two years after this post, Sunny would be gone, too. Some seven months after that, Jake would go.

When I originally posted this, it was only about a month after Bella died, and while that was sad, I had no idea I was about to endure one loss after another, leaving me unable to ever heal from the biggest loss of all. And then there’s the global pandemic thrown into the boiling cauldron of emotional turmoil, to give it the proper miasma of pain and despair.

All of which is why I couldn’t possibly care less about my gardens being overgrown with weeds, or the garage that’s now a set for “Hoarders” because nearly everything I stacked up has fallen over since I stopped working in there when it got hot. Or why I haven’t cleared out the last of the stuff I need to deal with in the house. None of that is important, none of it actually matters.

My life began to fall apart only a few months after this photo. It began quickly, with Nigel leaving us in only a few blinks of an eye after we found out he was even sick. Dealing with constant negative change is exhausting. I’ve worked so very hard trying to stay afloat, but too often it’s like trying to swim against a rip, though, fortunately, I have the good sense to try to swim out of the rip, not against it, and to simply float when I need to rest, all while trying to stay calm and hoping I’m doing it right, doing enough.

Life has absolutely no certainties whatsoever, good or bad, and we all know that. We generally ignore that reality because if we really thought about the implications, it could overwhelm us. I’ve learned the importance of treasuring every single good moment—even a not normal dog laying on your shoulder—because it will pass. Similarly, bad things and bad times will also pass, a reality that’s always obvious afterward and usually impossible to accept within those times of awfulness.

There’s the saying, “don’t sweat the small stuff, p.s. it’s all small stuff”, and as simplistic and banal as that is, there’s an element of truth in it. I wish I understood that when my not ordinary dog was laying on my shoulder three years ago. The life I’d known and loved was about to be ripped apart, obliterated, and that left me with my one, and only, regret: I wish I knew all this back then so I could’ve been more in the moment.

Speaking of which, right after I wrote this, I gave Leo a pat. Later that day, he’d want us to play “the chase game” (where we take turns chasing each other around inside the house), because he wants that most days. I always stop what I’m doing, if need be, when he wants to play that game because I know he loves it, and it’s a simple thing to do that makes him happy. Maybe I really have learned something?

This is a revised and expanded version of something I posted on my personal Facebook on March 11, the third anniversary of the post I’m talking about.