Fond Memories

Well, now it HAS been a week since my last post, and I'm trying to think of all the things that's happened since then.

The SCA event over the weekend went pretty well. I don't think I taught my class quite as well as I could have, but Master Erik talked to me later, and said "You teach well." I was flattered that he enjoyed what little part of my class he got to sit through. The next event I go to is going to be a little one day thing here in Memphis called Candlemas Collegium, where I'm teaching another class.

Candlemas will mark my seven year anniversary since my very first event. A lot of things have changed since then, and I like to think I've grown up quite a bit since then. It would be another year before I would meet the Johnsons at my graduation, and a year after that, I would go out to Colorado and meet Lanelle for the first time.

If you haven't noticed by now, I'm in a reflective mood at the moment. For those of you who know my dogs, I've got mighty sad news. Scotty died last night. We heard he'd been hit by a truck, so Dad went down and got him, and Mom called my brother and me. In a way, I'm kind of glad it was this way. Scotty's eyes, ears, legs and back were all going, though to my knowledge, all his internal organs were in pretty good working order, especially for his age. He was the oldest dog we've had in a long time. He came to us when I was in 4th or 5th grade, so he must have been around 14 or 15. If my math and memory are right, and if he'd been a newborn pup when we found him (which he wasn't) he would have been somewhere between 98 and 105 in dog years. I think I'll just be making it easy on my memory and calling him 100.

God, he was a good dog. Kind of ornery at times, stubborn and persnickety, and when he was older, we sometimes called him crotchety or grumpy, and I heard mom occasionally call him grouch, or the Grinch around Christmas. But we did love him.

Anyone who knows me knows I don't cry. To give you an idea, the last time I cried was in the airport last January when Lanelle went back home to Colorado after spending three weeks down here with me. Before that, there was an instance when Dad was still assembling his plane in Florida, but came home for some holiday or other. When he left, I cried on the way home. Before that, the only time I can remember crying was when I went to see The Last Samurai for the first time in theaters. In that big, final, climactic battle scene, when they charged the Gatling guns, and it went into slow motion and the music swelled, I thought about those men, and who they were, and why they were dying, and what for. I buried my face in the neck of my date and bawled like a baby.

I didn't cry last night when I got the news. I didn't even cry this morning when I passed Scotty's body in the garage and I said goodbye. But the farther from home I drove, the bigger the lump in my throat got, until finally, at the corner of Humphrey and Houston Levee...it began to snow. It was those tiny little things that look like grains of salt and don't stick, but man, it was enough. It didn't help that I was listening to Josh Groban's "Prayer" at the time, either.

I don't believe animals are capable of conscious thought. I believe the emotions we see them display are reactions to instincts...but I want to believe. If I took it too far, and believed that animals had free will, then that would mean that they could sin, and that Jesus would have had to die for them, too! But I still enjoy the thought of seeing them all again, someday. Tic, Lady, Tramp, Dandy, Suzi, Gearhardt, and now Scotty. My family and I have been truly blessed. Hopefully, we will continue to be so for many years to come.