MUSINGS FROM MIDLIFE
My Stories
Walking Summer Home
"Someone asked me what's the most difficult thing about owing a dog? I replied, the goodbye.”Unknown
On my hands and knees in the dirt digging out a grave for our dog Summer I hit clay, and Google says it needs to be one metre deep. The shovel with my arms now can’t reach the bottom. I have taken to using a saucepan to finish.
Damn Google. F*** life.
One of my daughters is coming in and out of the backyard to see if I’m done. Everything in me wants to cry out, to sob uncontrollably, not wanting to adult anymore. This is hard, it hurts. Crying for a week now as I watched our girl deteriorate. She could barely move.
The Journey
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice — though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you did not stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognised as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life you could save.