Life, Love & Death

Sometime in the last couple of weeks, we had raided our local bookstore for dog books. We were looking for training, obedience and crate training books. Instead we found AKC Dog guides, coffee table dog books, a smattering of breed specific books (but none on labs), couple of hard-to-understand training books and Marley & Me.

Marley & Me is a novel written by John Grogan about his canine buddy. The dog on the cover looked inviting, the review looked great. We bought it. Once home, I started reading it to find uncanny similarity to our own lives. "Hey", I thought, "this guy is talking about us!" The shift from singlehood to family, setting up home, kids, dog...this was absolutely where we are right now. Just got our own house, planning kids, brought in Nero to complete the ultimate family nest...it was so us, it was uncanny.

I read about Marley, the wild pup, and I thought...oh gosh this is whats going to come...am I really prepared...and I looked at Nero sitting next to me and told him he better be a good dog or else..! Halfway through the book, I stopped. Now I'm a person who can't set a book down without reading it cover to cover in one go, however long it takes. But, I couldnt go on...it was the terrible foreboding of not wanting to read about Marley growing old and dying. I wanted him to stay the eternal cute and cuddly pup and wild teenager. I want Nero to stay a pup forever.

Hubby picked up the book (he's a slow, few pages at a time reader) and started reading. He kept enticing me with tidbits from the book, till last night I finally picked it up again and reread it from start to finish. The book had me laughing and crying throughout, especially at the end. I forced myself to read it all. It is beautifully written. It touched each chord of love and every demon of mortality in me.

Why are canine life spans shorter than humans? I want Nero to grow with me, not leave me in 13 or 14 years after sharing my each and every waking moment; joys, tears and fears. He's only 2 months right now, and I know this is really silly; but I can't stop dreading losing him. 13 years doesnt seem so far away. As I read the book, I felt deeply on the loss, both the real loss of Marley and an imagined loss of Nero. For perhaps the first time, I understood my mother's pain on the loss of our first dog (who was put down when we were small) and her firm no stance on getting anymore dogs in the house (the fact that they need so much care, and she had 2 children and a career to juggle already probably also counted, but I digress.)

The author himself says, the journey is more important that the destination. A phrase heard many many times and yet so hard to actually follow.

He's growing so fast, every day he grows a bit taller, a bit heavier, a bit naughtier, a bit older. Soon I wont be able to pick him up and cuddle in my arms anymore. And as I write this, he has come and rested his little doggy head at my foot, reassuring me with his warmth. I wish time would stop.