Saturday 20 October 2012

Phantom dogs.

We are back in the days of the phantom dog I'm afraid.   This morning I heard Crispin bark......it was around 5 am......the time David has been getting up and letting him out. I moved to get up and then remembered. Shortly after that I heard him come up stairs but this time I wasn't fooled....I knew it wasn't him.
All this has happened before. William the springer used to nestle up to me in bed.....I  felt him quite clearly....he accompanied me on my walks too....
I am not daft,   please don't worry that I am sliding into dementia........I do know they are dead....and that their ghosts don't walk....its just that a sound is translated into something familiar....something our brains can deal with,  so if at 5am something in the old house shifts, if there is a small sound of any kind  my brain  hears a dog bark....
Another coping strategy learned over the years is to wander......I am wandering around the house...lamenting the loss of all the lovely golden hair on the carpets, I am wandering around the house. and the garden just looking.......it is me who is the ghost not the dogs...
This did not happen when Major the last golden died....for any of you hesitating about getting an extra dog,   having an overlap really does help...I mourned him but I had Crispin to look after instead....
Inevitably I have started jotting down my thoughts...I hesitate to call it poetry....


This familiar ache is here again
The ache that comes 
When something else goes. 
The ache that stayed for years when my husband died
The ache that accompanied my daughter to her grave.  
My dogs bring it on
When they go
The ache is now familiar, almost a part of me....
It is love that I am feeling......
A privilege not a pain....a joy not a sorrow.... 


1 comment:

Ray Barnes said...

After we said our last goodbye to our beloved Mitzi our first, and most dearly loved tortoiseshell cat, I would be woken early in the morning by her loud insistent mieaow. She was a 'talker' and her voice was very distinctive.
Awake I realised it had been a dream, but what really didn't help was that Sammy our tabby, who missed her terribly, would come running upstairs as though he had heard her too.
As Hamlet said, "there are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy".