The process of recovering

It is Wednesday, August 5th, 2026 9:12 at night and just a few minutes ago I felt a strange small flush of my former well-being. It has been a week since my dog died and every day has been a reminder of our lives together and my loss. Every day I have cried and experienced that pain of heart break which is a hot aching swollen lump of pain in my chest and the throat closing of the coming tears. That particular feeling comes upon me like a wave, while I am in the car, or sitting on the sofa.

A sign of my recovery was that today I could work on a painting for a memorial piece I am making for both my lost friends, Booty and Uma. It has been two weeks since Booty's body was found and he was buried. When I worked on the painting of him today, remembering him, his little face and his expression which always looked as though he were mildly startled, the wave of pain came. The fact that I could actually work on the painting was a good sign. The past two weeks, it has been hard to do anything, except errands and this blog.

Just awhile ago, surprisingly, came the little wavelet of good feeling, being alright with my ife, comfortable, not drenched in sorrow, only a short visit with the good feeling, but it gave me hope.

It will be a busy few days: lunch tomorrow with an old friend who is moving far away, Isabelle. On Friday, lunch with my great-niece Alex; on Saturday, the memorial service for a member of my Woodbury Friends Meeting who has passed away, Nora. I used to drive Nora to and from Meeting on Sundays. She was in her 80's and had dementia - a lot of anxiety. She would suddenly be struck with the fear that she had lost her handbag or her keys and she would gasp and call out.

Sje lived alone, but had adult children not far away. Like most of the adult children I have known, hers were distanced and involved in their own struggles. Nora eventually had to go into a nursing home which is where she died. Her daughter organized the memorial for this week.

Each day in the past few weeks of pain and loss, I have had a sliver of light, like a reminder to hold on, and a promise that I may at some point be able to be back in my life again in the way I once was. Surrrounding that sliver of light has hovered a dark ominous shadow, a foreboding that I will never get back and this is it - this is old age.

When I am felled by the sorrow wave, all my losses gather and it makes me think of the old New England witch torture where the villagers would pile heavy stones on a prone woman until she suffocated from the weight. It was witch 'proving'- Looks like sh died either way and that was the purpose - justified torture and murder. My old losses are like those rocks, romantic betrayals and losses, rejections and abandonments, all the streams of love that turned to fire and burned down my life.

That's the trick, to rise above all these rocks of despair crushing us down, those of us who live long enough. People lose their lovers, their family members, their hopes and dreams. We all lose our beauty, our physical comfort, our vision, our hearing, and we become walking wounded, leaning on a branch for a cane or a crutch, or the hhoulder of a fellow sufferer, or just plodding, shuffling through the pain on the long road to - whatever comes next.

I have contemplated adopting another dog to give it a home and honor the love, but I quail at the thought of all the adaptation and the caring and the emotional demands - going through all that again. I have given myself the month of August to get well and make the decision. I could do that one more good thing with my life and give a loving home ot a dog in a shelter - I could do that.

On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine.....

to comment or converse: wrightj45@yahoo.com

By the way if you are looking for places to go - Animal Orphanage in Voorhees is where I adopted my last two canine companions, Trixie and Uma, and please adopt rather than buying from breeders. It is cruel to use those female dogs in that way and millions of dogs languish in cages all over America hopeing for mercy. Keep your money and abandon the vanity of "breeding" and adopt a dog who needs you. After all, WE are all mixed breeds and it is a proven fact that mixed breeds are the healthiest.t