On April 26, my beloved Australian shepherd, Mitzi, passed away in our home, with my husband and I at her side.

I went to the vet a week later and pick up her cremains, and she has stayed on my bedside table ever since. I run my fingertips over the carved wooden box daily, telling her she’s a good girl, and that I miss her.

Her collar is front of the box, and if I touch it or pick it up, my dog Heidi will appear in an instant, anxious to see Mitzi when she hears the tags jingle. She will then smell the collar, and walk away slowly.

She remembers.

Our Christmas tree is up and fully decorated now. Mitzi and I spent many hours in the early hours of the day over the years sitting together in the living room, together, silent.

No one else was up, and the only light was from the tree.

It was always a magical time together for us.

Today I moved Mitzi’s wooden box for the first time since April.

I took it into the living room, setting it on the bookshelf that faces the Christmas tree. Next to the box is her puppy picture, and my favorite picture of her.

She now faces the Christmas tree, and it feels right.

Every morning she will be with me near the Christmas tree again.

I miss her.

A female cardinal on the porch rail

Hops and chirps, unaware of the 80lb dog just behind the window glass –

Her muted colors disappear

Into the Boston fern she dives into

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House finches peep, with a flurry of wings

Fluttering into the hanging geraniums

Fussing in the little nest they have hidden

Before setting off to light on the magnolia

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Squirrels run circles around the oleanders

Hopping onto the roof with a clutter

Running along the edge noisily

Before leaping onto the back fence

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The morning sun pours through live oak

Filtering it through the blinds –

I’m distracted by the life and energy

Just outside my windows to the porch

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A rainy Friday night. 

Nothing was going on in town, so the pizza take out business was hopping – a full parking lot, with delivery drivers coming and going like ants returning to the hill. 

She was going to do drive through pick up, but the line was around the building, so she pulled up, parked, and ducked her way in through the rain. 

Each of the handful of booths had a person waiting. She glanced up at the pizza ticker screen, and saw that twenty pies were in the prep or oven. 

She found a chair. 

There were at least eight young people making pizzas – their pace was steady and quick. They would focus on their pizza, then glance at screens above them to see what ingredients or toppings they needed. There was an underlying camaraderie amongst the young workers, smiling and working hard in the rush. 

The door opened, and a thin elderly woman with a steel grey mullet, a tee shirt, and jeans entered.  She marched up to the counter and stood, scowling, until a young man approached her and asked her how he could help her. 

From her perch by the door, she couldn’t hear her – but she could only imagine what the woman was saying. 

The woman’s body language was tense, and her facial expressions moved from anger to scowl and back. 

Finally she threw her hands up and said “I’m going out to the truck. The kids are out there” and stomped out the door past her, muttering “it’s been an (expletive) hour.  

She remembered her first paying job – at a pizza restaurant. Decades have passed, but a little goes a long way. 

In a few minutes her name was called, and she gratefully took her pizza. 

She told the workers as she left “thank you so much! Y’all are doing a great job!” And they responded with a hale of thanks. 

She left happy, albeit a little rained on as she walked to the car. 

A handful of flowers

Became a fitful bouquet

Of shop flowers

And yard treasures

A cluster of zinnias

Frayed off a tiny bloom

Too small for the glass jar

That held the fresh blossoms

I placed the zinnia

In a glass on the sill

With the bloom facing me –

But not for long

Slowly, overnight

The face of the zinnia turned

Moving to the side

And then toward the sun

They say that you don’t appreciate something until it’s gone. 

When it comes to one’s health, they are right. 

Up until the age of 44, I was a sedentary, emotional eater. I figured I got my work in during my 12 hour shifts, where I’d walk in excess of 10k steps in a day, lift patients much larger than me, and move my body every which way to accommodate what was happening. 

Oh, and I drank water. Lots of icy cold cups of water. 

At the age of 44, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I got off the couch and began walking. Then, running. I ate better. I tried to stop going to ice cream and pastry when I was down. 

Whoops, at age 50 it turns out I’m really type 1 diabetic.  I found an endocrinologist, got an insulin pump and a continuous glucose monitor, and kept running. 

Oh, now I have shoulder pain from lifting the legs of pushing, epiduralized, 300 lb labor patients. Now I have a torn rotator cuff due to a bone spur – and add an impinged deltoid. After some PT and steroids, that’s on hold. 

Next comes breast cancer – not in my gene pool at all. I’m the one in eight who will get it anyway. Lumpectomy, sentinel node biopsy, radiation, recovery. Cancer free for 19 months. 

But wait, there’s more. Monthly shots and meds that slammed me into instant menopause, which is not an enjoyable way to start that. It keeps my hormone positive cancer at bay, so they tell me. 

So today when I went to a routine appointment and got more potentially bad news, I went straight for the ice cream. 

I’ll be back on the spinach shakes tomorrow.

There’s only so much I can handle. 

Two double shedding canines are more than one poor house can bear. 

One dog is 80 lbs, the other 45lbs, and I’m convinced that the total weight of the dogs is 50 pounds when you subtract the hair. 

I haven’t been able to brush them recently, and my house shows it. 

I will sit in my living room, relaxing and reading a book, when a movement will brush just past my peripheral vision. 

Glancing up, I’ll see a ball of fur rolling past on the vinyl plank flooring. 

Tumbleweed is a plant that breaks free from a living organism and then rolls through the west/southwest United States, spreading seeds. 

Double shedding dog hair produces gathering blobs of movement that get caught under furniture. Collects in corners. 

There is no positive, life giving potential to these tumbleweeds. 

It takes daily sweeping and or vacuuming to keep it at bay. 

It will never be vanquished. 

I can decrease it slightly by brushing the dogs. 

The first dog, picked by proximity, will reluctantly cooperate with the brushing,  undercoat piling up to half the height of the dog. Then I’ll grab the next dog and brush them thoroughly. 

It’s not a job for the weak of heart, or the allergy prone.

The dogs happily enjoy being unburdened, and I’ll have a day or two of smaller hair piles. 

The only solution is living canine free, which is untenable. 

I’ll continue to coexist with the thin grey ghosts sliding across my floor. Hiding under my couch. Floating past me feet after I’ve  cleaned. 

It’s par for the course. 

Ten years ago, I was a foster for dogs that needed homes. They were saved from unsafe conditions, or pulled from the pound. 

A friend of mine got me started – I was told it was going to be three six week old puppies. 

I went to the pound and found out the mother of the pups had died during birth. 

The puppies were six days old!! 

How could I say now when they handed them to me? 

I spent the next seven weeks bottle feeding them around the clock. My Aussie Mitzi immediately took to mothering them, even though she had never had a litter, she was a natural. She taught them how to be dogs, and by eight weeks they were all potty trained. 

At their eight week adoption event, they all were adopted quickly. 

I fostered several dogs after this – usually dogs that would stay with us from a few days to a few weeks until they were adopted. 

Then came Penny. 

She was an adorable eight week old pup that was taken from a crack house. 

She was a wild one. 

She food guarded, savagely protecting her bowl from our other dogs. 

She resisted any attempt to train her. 

She was at turns affectionate, and obstinate. 

I just couldn’t get through to her. 

Finally I called the rescue and asked for help. Another experienced volunteer came and picked her up. 

I felt like such a failure. 

I gave it my best shot, but she was the puppy that broke me. 

I was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer in December of 2023 after my annual mammogram. 

I had no family history of breast cancer. 

By the end of February, I had gone through my lumpectomy, had 2 lymph nodes removed, recovered from surgery, and had twenty sessions of radiation. 

End of story, right? 

Wrong. Now comes the aromatase inhibitor, a tiny pill that suppresses my estrogen in my estrogen positive cancer, slamming me right into menopause. 

Hot flashes. Brain fog. Joint pain – intense, life altering joint pain. 

For the next five years. 

Then there are the mammograms. One every three months, then six months. A new term is learned – “Scanxiety”. It is a rager after you had cancer you weren’t supposed to have. 

Monthly shots add to the party – painful but necessary for five years to help suppress the hormones that the cancer cells feed on. 

Don’t forget appointments! Monthly to quarterly.  I love my oncologist, but it brings up the memories that I’d rather pack away. For good. 

I’m blessed it was found early. So grateful that they got it with a lumpectomy. 

It is not over, though.  Not by a long shot. 

I also have type one diabetes – diagnosed at age 50. I have asthma – well controlled, but present. 

To add icing to the cake, I had to have a knee replacement for end stage arthritis and a ruptured meniscus. 

So now I’m hobbling to all these appointments- physical therapy twice a week. Monthly shots. Post op appointments. Quarterly endocrinologist. My own doctor. 

Ad infinitum. 

I know it’s a lot. I feel that it’s a lot.

My word for the year is, interestingly enough, “focus”. 

At first, I didn’t understand why that was the word for me. 

Now I get it. 

I’ve enumerated the vast number of issues in front of me – and these are just the medical ones. 

Every day, I must set my focus. 

I am becoming more of a noticer – and I’m not talking about “of symptoms”. 

I’m noticing the glow coming into the windows at dusk, and I get up and go outside to see the gold and pink sunset painting the sky as darkness waits. 

I stop my walk to the car to focus on the swallowtail butterfly slowly bobbling around me, landing on a nearby bush, wings open in all their exquisite beauty. 

I focus on gratitude – intentionally being grateful everyday for something. Someone. 

This has made all the difference. 

Black Swallowtail

From the time of my birth, we moved every 1-3 years. 

I was a child with a country, but without a home. 

Today they call children like me military dependents – back then we were called military brats. 

This was my life – it was all I ever knew. 

We spent most of my childhood living on base. The houses were older and nondescript- nothing like the lovely homes they are building on base for today’s military warriors and their families. 

When I was ten, we moved to the Philippines, leaving our cat and the only dog we ever had behind. The quarantine requirements for the animals were too cruel to bring them along. 

I loved the Philippines, and traveled all over the islands with my school and youth group. It was here I got my love for international travel. 

I also learned how tremendously blessed we were, coming from a first world country. The abject poverty in the Philippines was shocking, and heart rending. 

When we returned stateside, I literally bent down and kissed the tarmac as soon after I descended the wobbly metal stairs. 

I have never taken for granted  being blessed to be an American. Any time I hear our national anthem, tears are in my eyes. I remember. 

Soon I was back in the routine of frequent moves. 

When I was a sophomore in high school, we moved to the Wasatch front, and I was able to complete my high school years all in the same school.

I had lived in this area as a very small child, and I loved the mountains. Returning, I found that my love had grown, and that this was definitely somewhere that I could spend the rest of my life. Some of my happiest memories are from that state. 

After a few more moves, I ended up in Florida. It’s a state. I never planned to move to, and have never been truly happy in. The Gulf is beautiful, rimmed by soft sugar white sands. But for a lot of the year, it is unbearably hot and humid. There are all kinds of bugs and flying insects and things that bite you. Worst of all are the hurricanes. Five months of the year is hurricane season, and you’re on edge the entire time.

After marrying my husband, he would take me up to his family‘s farm. I absolutely loved it! The peace. The quiet. There was no city noise. The noise was the rustling of the grasses. Insects murmuring. Distant coyotes. 

It smelled wonderful. Freshly turned dirt. Wildflowers. Clean air! 

As the sun set, we would watch the fireflies. Down in suburbia, they have been wiped out by lawn care business chemicals. 

It was then then I realized that I wanted to live in the country. 

I’m a country girl – I hate country music, I’m talking about a love for our country. For the beauty of houses that are miles from the next home. Gardens that are an acre large. Not having to buy heirloom roses because they grow in your yard. Peonies. Lilacs. This is where I want to live! 

You can find country spots in most of our nation – but I know that wherever we settle when we retire, this is where I wanna be. In the country. 

It’s a respite for me. I want a place where I can plant my roots deep, and our children can come and visit, bringing our grandchildren. 

I want the stability of having a forever home – even though it’s taking me most of my life to find it. 

It gives me great peace to know that I will be living in the country someday soon, and our children and grandchildren will be able to be excited to come and visit us, and make country memories that will last forever in their minds as well.

I’m making my plans now – plans that include homemade quilts. A rocking chair or two on the porch. Adirondack chairs that face the river.

It’s a future I can’t wait to meet. 

I read my planner wrong 

Arrived at the wrong place, wrong time 

So I drove aimlessly until I had a goal – 

Breakfast for one

Waiting at a light

I spot vivid purple morning glory 

Flashing through tangled kudzu –

Glorious, indeed

Then a handful of butterflies

Orange in the morning sun 

Began a gamble throughout 

Delighting me deeply 

I messed up my start 

Yet it became a thing of beauty – 

A few minutes in a car 

Led me to smiles and memories.