Thank you to all who have visited my blog in the last week and shared your thoughts either here, on Facebook, or through other means. We are blessed with many friends, both near and far away, who have gone out of their way to offer gentle comforting words to us.

Dallis and I have been taking lots of walks together, checking in regularly with each other during the day, and sharing how we feel about this suddenly quieter life. We laugh and we cry as we remember all the little ways that our Sadie became such a big presence in our lives.

I write poems, not so much for publication as to have an outlet for creative expression. Most of my poems remain in a file on my computer’s hard drive labeled “Poems in Process” ~ it’s a kind of purgatory where they go while they get their acts together and decide whether or not to behave themselves.

Anyway, I started writing a poem about Sadie last October and it landed in poem purgatory with all the rest. However, I pulled it out a few days ago and started playing with it. Here it is, along with a couple of Dal’s many beautiful photos of our little girl.

The poem is called simply “Sadie’s Dream,” at least as I imagine it!

Stretched out by a pillow on our bed ~

        eyes shut     ears alert     heart quickening

               your little legs begin to move ~

                           like those times you are set loose

                                                                                       and you run

        through newly mown grass

                                                         chasing the wind

                                                                                             getting lost           in the sky

and then

               the big finale ~

                  rolling this way then that

                           carefree       doglike

                           one of your own treasured kind

Romping through your private field of dreams

               a smile rises

                     a sly contented smile

Sadie girl ~ how I love seeing you dream happiness

In the mail the other day we received a children’s book from a dear friend titled DOG HEAVEN, written and illustrated by Cynthia Rylant. When we opened it up to the very first page, a smile (a sly one at that) came to my face as we read, “When dogs go to Heaven, they don’t need wings because God knows that dogs love running best.” We learned as we continued to read that God gives dogs “fields and fields and fields” in which to run.

Sadie didn’t have far to go to get to heaven.

She closed her eyes, and there she was!

(Thank you to my beautiful wife Dallis for taking so many wonderfully expressive photos of Sadie, who by the way was not in love with cameras.)

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