Trailhead

The park where I often walk Polly the Beagle (and where Sarah’s planned memorial bench will go) has a very large open area of playing fields and swing sets and a nice big path that takes you all the way around the park through pines and other trees. There’s also a more wooded area of the park with a couple of trails where dogs often get walked around and teens hang out. When she was younger, Polly loved to pull us down these wooded trails and zoom off when she saw rabbits or squirrels. She was never exactly a well-trained dog and we spent a lot of time calling her name in this area of the park.

The last few years Polly hasn’t been interested in going down the wooded trails. She hasn’t explored them at all since she was about eight years old. She still takes us to the park pretty often but she walks around the open area and makes a loop by the enclosed garden area. Friday, she went over to the trailhead and sniffed a little bit, and I thought maybe she was going to go down there. I was surprised. I even asked her if she wanted to go down the trail with me. But she turned away and led us back into the main part of the park. She clearly felt that wasn’t part of her life anymore, and that was that.

Her life has changed. That’s it. The Polly who went down the trail is not her any longer. No need to sit at the top of the trailhead and mourn the old Polly for her. As opposed to me, who can’t get through the park or go anywhere really without crying and thinking about my old life, my new life, the meaning of my life, and how to build something new.

Last night I dreamed of Sarah, that I had woken her up for school and dressed her, but then she wanted to get more sleep. This would never have happened in real life, but in my dream she just wanted a few more minutes to snooze. I put her in bed in her clothes, and then when I heard the bus coming, I grabbed her out of bed and in the dream I was holding her in my arms and spinning or gently twirling with her to wake her up. She was still half asleep but she was enjoying it. I was saying “Lovely, lovely, lovely” over and over in the dream as I held her and twirled her. I guess this is a way of wishing she would come back to life somehow. It felt so good in the dream to have her in my arms again.