Lindsey

My parents lost their dog unexpectedly last week. Although she was eleven years old, her death was a total shock. All the days leading up to her last were unremarkable - she was the same happy-go-lucky dog she has been since puppyhood. To lose her so suddenly, so without a shadow of warning, was a devastating blow.

I met Lindsey the same weekend Steve came home with me for the first time. We travelled home together for the official "meeting of the family" and there was little Lindsey, a tiny English Springer Spaniel, a few pounds of joy helping mend the broken hearts suffered when our first springer spaniel died of old age. I took a picture of her that weekend, one that forever captured the puppy that she was and the dog she would always be. She sat beneath a canopy of black-eyed susans, the sun streaming in on her little head, her tongue sticking out, her eyes all innocence and anticipation.

She never lost that look. Although her ears grew deaf and her eyes cloudy, she never stopped being a puppy. Our first dog carried the weight of maturity as she aged. Her eyes gained the look of wisdom that comes only with long life. But Lindsey's eyes always maintained their innocence, their anticipation that some great dog event was about to happen - that someone she loved was about to come home, that a puppy bone might be slipped her way, that someone would sit on the couch and give her a reason to flop her head in their lap.

In her absence, she is more present then ever. In the silence that greets us at the door, she is there, somehow even more so than in the chorus of barking and jumping that greeted us in her life. In the empty space by the sliding glass door, she still sits, her presence so keen in her absence, in that unnecessary rush to get in before the dog gets out. I am sure my parents feel her the most in the absence of a warm weight at the end of their bed each night.

It is funny how things are - what we take so for granted in the people and animals that we love, the things that are such a part of our daily routine that we almost cease to notice them, until they are gone.

For me, Lindsey will be ever present in the black-eyed susans. Their bright, cheerful yellow the blooming reminder of her sunny personality, the funny little dog with one ear flopped over her head, who sat patiently, but with eyes pleading for help as she was dressed as a pirate or had coasters stacked on her head by a small boy, who won over a little girl who once shrieked like Lucy in the Peanuts whenever she came near to one that begged to feed her puppy bones and didn't mind an occasional wet kiss, who made sure all visitors knew they were welcomed and made sure she had a good seat on the couch for movie nights.

Even in her absence, she is a presence.