Runnin' Up That Hill

 "...if I only could, I'd make a deal with God/and I'd get Him to swap our places"

so goes the famous chorus of one of Kate Bush's most commercially successful songs. It's been stuck in my head for days - well, that line anyway - even though it doesn't apply to dogs. I'd do anything to give Dan more time, to at least rid him of the  GOLPP that is slowly weakening his body and paralyzing his larynx, but then if I died instead of him, who'd be here to look after him (and everybody else?)

The sentiment is real, that I'd take his condition if I could give him years of life and health, but it doesn't make sense,other than in the imaginal realm, where I just want to reach out with all my heart and soul and say "I'll do whatever I have to, for you to be ok".

He's not ok. He's not... awful, he's still here, but I see the effects of the disease, every few days or so, a bit more...and I just walk with him, hold him in my heart, feed him as he pleases, tell him our stories at night. Tell him, over and over, how loved he is, and how grateful I am. How I wouldn't be who I am without him. How I miss, and treasure our wild and free days, forever. As John O'Donohue said


"Memory is the place where our vanished days secretly gather. Memory rescues experience from total disappearance. The kingdom of memory is full of the ruins of presence. It is astonishing how faithful experience actually is; how it never vanishes completely. Experience leaves deep traces in us. It is surprising that years after something has happened to you the needle of thought can hit some groove in the mind, and music of a long vanished event can rise in your soul as fresh and vital as the evening it happened. Memory provides such shelter and continuity of identity. 

Memory is also fascinating because it is an indirect and latent presence in one's mind. The past seems to be gone and absent. Yet the grooves in the mind hold the traces and vestiga of everything that has ever happened to us. Nothing is ever lost or forgotten. In a culture addicted to the instant, there is a great amnesia. Yet it is only through the act of remembrance, literally re-membering, that we can come to poise, integrity, and courage. Amnesia clogs the inner compass and makes the mind homeless. Amnesia makes the sense of absence intense and haunted. We need to retrieve the activity of remembering, for it is here that we are rooted and gathered. "

John O'Donohue, Eternal Echoes 

I walk the haunted trails of our vanished blissful days, forever, with "You and you and only you..."