Friday, May 09, 2008

Nikki Valentine

Most people's dark sides are pretty pathetic.  The evil that people imagine is sometimes great, but everyone imagines an open season on loud people or people who stop and block aisles in warehouse stores.  Few actually do it.  Then those who do are sometimes shocking in their...patheticness.  If that's a word.  More often than not the people who kill are whiners, needy and entitled.  Not getting what they want is a great injustice and they will do anything, without regard for others, to fulfill a desire.

This hit me in terms of tragedy today.  I was asked some weeks ago if I had ever loved someone so much that it made me cry.  I answered, without really thinking, that I had forgotten how to cry long before I learned how to love.  It probably sounds like a 'tough guy pretending to be deep' platitude. Sorry.

I remember the last time I cried and why.  Things today brought that memory very close to the surface.  Mirrored it too well.  So the memory was there and I poked at it... and it wasn't so huge a tragedy.  Remove the fact of living it and it is a very small story.  It wasn't "Where the Red Fern Grows" by any means, or "Brian's Song".  But, really, written with less skill would "Where the Red Fern Grows" have been what it is?  The story is small- a boy and a dream and his dogs and love and loyalty to the edge of death.  A small story, except to the boy, and to all the people who became that boy for a few hours while reading that book.

Goodbye, old girl.  I'm glad you had one last good spring.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

My feelings, small too, and large.

Kai Jones said...

I'm sorry for your loss.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear that Nikita has passed on...she was quite the companion....I loved her.

Hugs to all of you!

Melissa

Steve Perry said...

No words are enough. I feel for you.

My last GSD, Scout, made it to fifteen. We love the breed, but we can't look at them now and not feel the pang. (We got Corgis because they are easier to lift if they go lame, and they have similar personalities, that's what we tell people. But part if it is that Shepherds are just too easy to get deeply attached to -- they have more soul than most people I know.)

Kami's eulogy was lovely. Here's the one I did for Scout:

http://themanwhonevermissed.
blogspot.com/2006/12/scout.html