It’s well past four in the morning. I hear the ticking of a clock I never really heard before. It’s on the kitchen wall and it’s loud.

Gosh, I’ve been sick, sicker than I have been in 15 years. Food poisoning from some bad vegetables. Better now, but bad enough I’m having to miss my grandmother’s funeral because I could not fly. Better now, but wow was that horrible. Better now, and also worse.

I’m coming to grips with the fact there has never been a time I looked at the home I live in when Buddy wasn’t alive. No wall, no ceiling, no anything in this house we’ve made our home for ten years that I didn’t see through these eyes without him being around somewhere.  But he wasn’t ripped from us. He gave us the gift of his life long after we had any reason to expect it.

We’ve been given permission to spread his ashes at his favorite places on earth. (By the way, here’s one of them: Chevy Chase Beach Cabins. A place we go to vacation and heal, and they deserve your business.)

I would have liked my Mee Maw to see Discovery Bay from the cabins too, but that’s not to be.

We have pink flowers for Buddy, a gift from close friends. We had yellow for Remy. My grandmother is gone and thanks to incredible bad luck I cannot be there to say goodbye.

These are things in various lenses everyone deals with. For certain there are worse lenses, and better. We wish we could change them. I mean, certainly I wish I could, not just for me but for anyone who runs into that buzz-saw of circumstance that provokes sorrow. It is what it is.

I don’t know what makes me think of all this, I’ve written parts of it already.

I suppose it’s the fact I’m no longer sad, at least for now. There’s these pink flowers on the table that smell so good, and I can keep a meal down. We’re dog sitting an 8 month old border collie who has infused our routine with peeing to mark his territory, energy, life.

I try to remind myself I live a first world life, all of it every bit of it. I remember to try and make things better for others.

So! Be excellent to each other for starters. I’ll try and help with the rest.