Ruminating on grief and celebration in the loss of a sweet pup: “Animals can do the same for us; their touch and constancy melting us into who we were to begin with. Until we are irrevocably marked by love.”

Given the chance to be outside, to be moving, to be with his people – the dog almost visibly hums with the joy of it all. True, the other 98% of the time he’s laid out on his side by the fire, showing age in the way he moves. But he seems to say something else: Yes, I am achey and older, but also resilient. Perhaps this is the trick to health: to drop so fully into the present that the can’t stories fall away.