My Dog Timmy

Today I am sad. Today when I woke up and looked through my dusty window, I saw the sky awash with the pale lustre of a sad blue, heard gentle whispers of sadness in the crisp cold air, and felt shimmerings of an ancient sadness on the new green leaves of Spring. Today morning, when I saw the photograph of my dog Timmy on the desk, I suddenly remembered that it was the first anniversary of his death.

April 16, 2004 was the day when he had stretched himself out beside the black sofa and refused to wake up for his dinner. I had tried long and hard to come to terms, as they say, with his sudden death by resorting to various subterfuges. I would sometimes go out to meet my friends in the pub, and would only feel saddened by their warm cheerfulness. I would smile at their jokes, of course, not wishing to be a spoilsport, but I knew that my time with them was just a fleeting distraction that would soon end after the party was over. During the long day, I worked as a divorce lawyer with a legal firm in London, listening to countless men and women as they struggled with their own wretched pasts. I tried to convince myself that there were billions of human beings in the world whose lives were torn apart by searing pain, and that they had endured far greater calamities than my own loss of Timmy. And yet when I would come home in the evening to my flat, all my powers of reasoning would desert me at once, and I would once again feel the absence of Timmy burrowing a deep hole into me.

I would go out for morning walks in the park sometimes, and see happy little children playing around and running after their dogs. I would see dogs in people's cars, near supermarkets, beside babies' prams, at picnic parties, on neighbours' gardens, and with homeless people; and all of them would remind me of Timmy. Timmy was everywhere as the great absence that was more present to me than anything or anyone else. Timmy dead seemed more alive to me than he had ever been when he had lived with me in flesh and blood.

That is why I am sad today. And that is why this post has nothing grand to say, it has no moral for the day, no ironic twist, no conclusion to the tale, no justification for my misery, and no cheerful thought to help you get along with your own life. I can only write these lines :

Dear river of life

Flow on, flow, flow

But tonight

I shall not set

My frail boat on you.