Healing begins once the wound has fully opened. It works that way in the emotional world as well as the world of physical wounds. Our healing commenced with the lovely phone calls, emails, and comments that you all sent after the post about my friend Edzell.
I thank all of you, including my brothers, sister, mom, mother-in-law, friends, and complete strangers who have written such lovely notes and called regarding the death of my friend, Eddie Bo-Beddie, Eddie Spaghetti, Edzilla, Eddie the Paper Shredder… well, the list goes on and on and on. He had more names than you can imagine. But he will always be my buddy Ed.
Stormy has taken the opportunity to step up to the plate and claim a bit of the house for herself. She’s always been a “background” dog – never at the front of the line, always in the other room, seldom seeking favor for herself. She figured out that Edzell wasn’t coming back after a very short period of time yesterday.
The first sign was that she came close when we gave her a big treat. She actually hopped up on the couch between us with the thing in her mouth. And then, for the first time ever, she hopped down on the floor and laid on top of my foot while she gnawed on the bone. That’s right where Edzell would have spent the time – on top of my foot. I always took that as a sign of respect and honor when he did it – it’s just been doubled.
So, perhaps, she was just waiting for the giant shadow he cast to fade in the distance before she stepped into the light and looked for her own penumbra. It’s there, girl, so bask in that light for a while.
I close this update with a video that my friend Debra sent to me. It made me cry. Debra, that’s my job, making readers cry. But I’ll let it pass just this once.
