Unconditional

Note:  In the winter of 2024, I lost my beloved dog Zoe.  Although I loved all of my dogs equally, Zoe and I were kindred spirits.  I remember when her sister Hayden died, and in the midst of our grief, friends and family members commented on how they worried about me when it was Zoe’s time to leave.  As expected, her passing crushed me.  I’ve written about it, and the love and passing of all my dogs, in my memoir-in-progress.  Being a mother to dogs is the only type of mother I have ever been and will ever be.

After Zoe left this world, I wasn’t sure if I would ever crawl out of my grief until one day, a new little man entered my world.  This piece is an ode to Caddis.

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I lay at the bottom of the river drowning in my own despair.  No one can help me.  No one can even see me.  I’m all alone in this darkness and I don’t even think I care anymore.  I’m not sure how I got here.  Just one stumble and tumble at a time.  Each day piling onto the next one until all sense of time and reality have vanished.  People say “I’m depressed” like it’s an easily assessable trinket to pluck from the dollar store shelf.  A novelty emotion that anyone can claim.  Real depression is indescribable.  Why give reference or definition to something that makes you feel so unimportant.  So flippant about existence.  So meaningless.  I wonder how long I will be down here.  How long will I sink into the muck before something pulls me out.  I wonder if anything even has the power to do so. 

Just then, a stirring.  A festering of need.  A tug at my heart and reminder to live.  It lures me from the darkness, hook set in mouth, me slowly emerging from my pupa state to the surface once again.  All of a sudden, I want to fly.  I want to be free.  What is this I feel?  And why is the feeling so familiar?  Oh, I smile.  I remember.  It’s unconditional love and it’s bringing me back to myself.  This time, the unconditional love of Caddis.  With his bowed legs and soft belly.  Curious eyes and lonely brow.  He snuggles and kisses and nips and kisses.  My lap has been claimed the safest place in the world.  My touch a constant need. 

The grief and loss that held me under for so long is releasing its entanglements, setting me free to soar again.  As a companion.  As a mother.  As someone who deserves to feel unconditional love and give it right back.  I am once again followed.  I am watched while I cook.  I hear a soft sigh.  A playful bark.  A long yawn.  I am excited and protective and joyful and alive.  I can’t remember the last time I felt so alive.  All because of him.  My little man.  Dressed in his formal whites, tan speckles down his spine.  Tan ears to match that stand at attention on his tilted head.  Tail wagging and whipping in the air, cutting through the dark, through the sad, through the lonely and alone.  He thinks I saved him from that imprisonment where I found him.  He has no idea that he actually saved me from my own.