still mine

Jake - my big red love - always

Two passages from the book Dog Years by Mark Doty. His writing feels so much like my own thoughts, my own feelings. I don't remember a book that's ever struck me like this one did ...

The capacity for despair is probably equivalent to the ability to experience joy; such depths in the self are required in order to make possible the mounting of heights

But despair and depression, of course, are not the same thing. Depression is nearly always the consequence of despair, a despair one cannot feel one's way through in order to emerge from the other side, a despair that will not be moved. Sometimes such pain–perhaps especially when it's been known for a long time and all one's resources are used up, depleted–takes hold in the self; it becomes the climate in which we operate, a daily weather. Depression–simply the state of being exhausted by despair?–takes up residence in the desk drawer, the pile of shoes at the bottom of the closet, last night's unwashed dishes tumbled in the sink. Despair is sharp, definite, forceful; it is a response to experience. Depression accumulates, pools, sighs, settles in: it is the absence of response. It does not make things move. Consider our tropes for it: a cloud, a shadow, a weight. It lingers, broods, sits heavily, it replaces the sharpness of grief (which no one can bear to feel for very long) with the muffling emptiness of fog. Except that I love fog, with it's veils and secrets, it's lusters and atmospheres. Depression, more precisely, is a kind of dirty haze, and dims everything without adding mystery. It slows and conceals and stills the circulation of the air. p 155

I have my face down against that smooth muzzle, the ears that still smell, as they have all of his life, of corn muffins. Paul's holding him from the other side, so that we can both be in his gaze. We each speak to him quietly. First there's a shot to relax him, to make sure the second shot will work, and I don't think he even feels it. And then we ease him out of that worn-out body with a kiss, and he's gone like a whisper, the easiest breath. p 213

I've changed my ways a little;
I cannot now run with you
in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you,
if you dream a moment, you see me there.
I loved you well, and was loved.
Deep love endures
to the end and far past the end.
If this is my end, I am not lonely.
I am not afraid. I am still yours.

An excerpt from The House Dog's Grave Robinson Jeffers

Jake's been gone just a little over two years. I still think about him every single day. I look back now and I think when that handsome red dog came along, I let go of a life's worth of accumulated love. I gave it to him, willingly and easily. And as soon as he was gone, and after, for the longest time it felt as if all of my truest love went with him. My grief over the loss of that big love became my despair, my Ache & Sadness, my depression. You know that I've since fallen in love with the cowboy ... but oh my, how I love that dog still.

and I think it's much easier, for me anyway ... to be in love with a dog.