I love you more

golden leaves from the burning bush near the front porch of this old house

always the last leaves to turn, the last leaves to fall.

In 2 hours from now the cowboy and the beautiful brown hound will begin their 4000km trek back home to us. He'll call often from his stops along the roadside for fuel or to let Bess race around some safe and secure rest stop far away from the maddening highway traffic. For the next two+ days I will have my cordless phone charged and nearby me at all times and the weather network's highway conditions map always open on my big beautiful 24" imac screen so that I may report any trouble looming ahead or better still I can say all systems go ... go, go

He's been gone just past 2 weeks and the time has passed in a blink. We have spoken on the phone every day, often many times each day. Planning, dreaming and scheming together this brand new forever life of ours. We repeatedly tell each other our tales of life before that fateful day, that sunny September afternoon in the park when all of our accumulated love began the beautiful crash into each other, with Miss D and baby Bess the brown hound racing accomplices. We share our past Aches & Sadness, of how we each had really given up on life. We both were just stumbling along, trying to make it through another day but not having any real concept of why it was that we should keep on stumbling. No meaning, no purpose, no spark. I felt as lonely as lonely could be. All I thought I wanted or needed was another big red dog exactly like Jake, a carbon copy please - not golden, not brown or mottled in colour, he'd have to be red. And maybe if I could find that dog then I'd feel loved and safe once again. Thankfully I had MLou who kept tirelessly holding me up, I had my work which I do love, my crazy cats and the love of Missy D but I still felt mostly broken. I'd convinced myself that I was forever damaged. Smashed into a million pieces that would never fit together again - or so I thought.

Turns out that cowboy was feeling much the same way. Turns out our lives have had remarkable similarities. We've battled so many of the same demons and we've each lost to them much of the time. I'm sure that it must seem to anyone outside of this thing looking in, that this current is moving way too fast, maybe dangerously so. How could all of this happen so quickly ? so furiously and all with such audacious conviction. It's stunning and it makes me happier than I ever imagined possible. The cowboy wonders if maybe when his black lab Abby left this earth in late July and made her way up to heaven Jake was waiting patiently there for her to arrive and the two of them conspired together - this big miraculous love. It is cosmic ... no doubt about it.
It is a reason to believe than anything & everything is always possible if only a tiny little part of you can continue to believe it.

I love you more he tells me.
I shake my head Not possible I reply because I love you more