My Special Boy

Yesterday was as hard as it gets for a lover of pets.

Arthur would have been 16 this year. His last few months included worsening health challenges. We thought we were losing him back in August, in fact, but he bounced back to have a wonderful renaissance all through the autumn and into the new year. But nothing lasts.

I made sure during those last few months to make as many ‘forever moments’ as I could with him. A ‘forever moment’ is a time to which one may return in the mind for comfort—one of the many afternoons I spent with him sitting in the sunshine, or during one of our ‘huggie’ sessions as pictured below.

I lied earlier about yesterday. Today is worse. Yesterday I only felt glad that he was free of his ills. But since his health began failing he started sleeping with us every night, right in between our pillows, and he would greet me in the morning with kisses and one of our hugs. The dawn may have been golden and beautiful earlier, but the hole in my heart today will take some time to fill back. All I can say is that, if you choose to love deeply, you will one day grieve with equal depth. This trade off is an ineluctable part of the life-bargain, polarity representing one of the seven hermetic principles that animate and orient reality.

Bless Arthur for all the wonderful years he gave us. He and his brothers Rueben and Ollie, who remain healthy, all showed up in the yard way back in August 2005; their spirits, and those of all our beloved brood through the thirty-three years Jenn and I have been together, will only leave here the day that we do.

I would say more, but I can’t see well enough right now to type further.