A Return To Hope

The death of a dog, a renewal of purpose. (MWC Death 2021)

Talk about low-hanging fruit. You’re thinking: “No, tell me this guy isn’t exploiting the death of the family dog to desperately try to make that first buck on Medium!”

As my fingers flail around the keyboard now I’m wrestling with precisely that sentiment. Mostly, I’m losing.

I could say that I’m memorializing a poignant moment in my family that happened just last Sunday. I could say that I think there’s something profound to learn in that experience. I could say — catharsis.

Whatever.

Yes I loved that little doggie and yes he was, as doggies go, really a good boy. But surely this isn’t about me, nor even about him.

It’s about what he meant to my two teenage girls. And what they mean to me. They were only little kids when he was adopted into our family about 6 years ago. They’re 13 and 15 now.

The older of them cried and wept and stared off into space and sobbed a bit more. Then she slowly turned her attention to being reunited with her friends and telling tales of the three weeks they had just spent abroad, shopping, dining and body surfing in and around Malibu and Los Angeles, selfies at The Grand Canyon, and a few other adventures I hope they’ll write about when they’re ready to. Living!

We live now, and they’ve grown up, in Poland.

But my younger daughter, well, I’ll let her speak for herself:

That she could be this eloquent while feeling this broken inside, in what is effectively her second language, is what gave me the courage, if that’s what it is, to write this now. Not only write it — she, they — have inspired me to actually hit “publish” once I’m done with it.

Until this moment I had some serious doubts that I could bring myself to do that. But I will.

In 58 years of living, as a dog person for sure, of course I’ve been through this myself before. Some of those experiences were part of the moments we’ve had since Sunday, saying things any of us would say in these circumstances…lots of consoling, explaining that its ok to feel whatever you feel, that there is no “supposed to.” Lots of hugs.

What I’m left with though, as this consolation continues, albeit much more lightly, is that they’re so empathetic, so intuitive, and so very genuine.

They seemed to know what I would say before I said it, felt what I was feeling before it became evident in my face and body. And they even knew what to do, to make sense of their own feelings and the event that precipitated them, before I had any real idea.

All the talking I did, perhaps like this article, was probably just fluff. Garnish to the feast of hugs and an open heart to just — listen.

This again is not about me, not directly. It’s about the world that I’ll leave behind when my day comes. There is hope for this world, in dire need of it as I see it, in the hands of these humans and their generation.

Yes, as any proud father would, I think of my girls as direct peers of Malala, Greta, et al. If you knew them you might too. Viewed through that particular prism, one has to believe brighter days are ahead. This generation, particularly of women, not only can change the world, but actually wants to. Enough to make it happen.

So you see now how a death has circled back into hope. I guess that’s what I had in mind, somewhere in the mess, as I sat down to put finger to keyboard.

This has been a surprisingly painless (almost) exercise. Somehow the sharing is, well, that’s all I really needed from it.

Thanks for listening.