Life is Your Story

Your dog is there for you Not sometimes Not maybe Not never But always He waits for you He watches you He is your best friend And when you are alone Living alone A marriage or relationship in the past Your dog is your present Your dog is your future He is your Saturday night date Your excuse that is not an excuse For just staying home He will watch your favorite TV show He will listen to your ongoing commentary He will tilt his head and do his best to understand Whatever dribble is coming from your mouth                                               R.I.P. Buster  He will want to share all of the moments of his life With all the moments of yours And then he will want more More than time can give In the short life he lives A dog is a gift He comes and goes He teaches you to love life To love unconditionally To love him To love yourself Even if you feel no one else does There are no stronger fee

The friendships you create and nurture when you are younger are different than the ones you establish later in life. The friends who grew up with you knew your entire family. They played in your house and sometimes their siblings and your siblings and a whole gang of neighbourhood kids joined together for a game of baseball or hockey or just to hang around in the park doing nothing and doing everything. They also knew things that friends you meet later in life will never know like the smell of your house/family. You know the way every family has their “smell” They also knew if your mom was a good cook and enjoyed her best meals and desserts and they knew what type of food was in your fridge and in your pantry and how much of it they could get away with eating without feeling uncomfortable. There was that one house where everyone hung out either because the parents were away often or they just didn’t care if there were 20 kids in their basement doing whatever they were doing.

My mother called last night to inform me that a dear friend of many years and many circles had passed away after a valiant battle with Cancer. This was not the first friend she has lost nor will be it the last. So what are the "circles" I mentioned? Well there are certain people in our lives who just keep showing up around each corner. We meet them when we are starting out our journey and spend quality, in-depth time with them and then they move on as do we. A month, a year may go by and then one day they appear and suddenly you are working in the same office or taking the same class and its as if you never left them. Your friendship, your bond, is so strong that it levitates eternally and then reaches down and places you side by side as if you were never apart. Circles. They go round and round and sometimes they make our heads spin and our hearts swoon for they are sacred. They encompass and exhude all the passion, excitement and adventure that rolls on and beco