People tell me that I'm looking and sounding stronger every Sunday. And now I get three Sundays in a row where I don't have to preach at all. Which should be a great help in getting the rest of my life just a little better organized before the snow flies....
Anyway, the reason I'm up so late tonight is that I drank WAY too many diet Cokes tonight out at Bingas playing trivia with my younger brother and one of my parishioners. We came in third, but tonight that was still good enough to win Erik a ball cap...which was the one prize he said he'd wanted when we went in.
And, of course, I'm still missing Parker -- and both feeling the hole that she has left in my life, while at the same time how much of my own life-energy was expended trying to keep her "whole" when she was no longer really here. And it's strange, even weird -- because there are times when I feel as though I can sense her presence in the next room, or hear her dogtags jingle against one another as she shakes her head before settling back down on the pillow again.
Our new puppy, on one of her first nights in her new home. I hate to admit it, but in many ways this little dog was a lot like the child that MFW and I never had together..jpg)
Parker's first bath. It was nice to have a kitchen sink large enough that she could fit in it. Later on, when we had to start bathing her in the tub, it was never quite as satisfactory. This was one of those activities which she learned to tolerate, but never really learned to enjoy. I always appreciated her a little more when she was freshly washed and smelling like a dog, JUST like dog, and ONLY a dog...and not like everything else she'd sniffed and decided to roll in over the past few weeks (or months)....
Parker was often very helpful when I was working as a Graduate Teaching Fellow, and need to mark a lot of papers in a hurry. How many teachers can honestly tell a student that their dog ate YOUR homework?
And she also helped me with my own writing. Mostly sermons though; for some reason she just never seemed to find my more academic writing much to her taste.... (too dry, I'm guessing)
One of Parker's favorite places of all -- walking along Juniper Beach in front of my mom's cabin on Camano Island. If you look very closely, you can see her leaping up off the ground in the proper "heel' position, just to the left of MFW et moi.
2 comments:
Reading about Parker helps me process the lost of my buddy, Earnest - thanks.
After Peppercorn died, I would "catch glimpses" of him all the time. I would see him pass by my feet or sleeping on the radiator in the diningroom. I thought I was nuts until I met a couple who had also just lost a pet. They told me that they had similar experiences after their pet died.
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