I used to be somewhat of a neighborhood cult figure, thanks to Brandy, my English springer spaniel.
When Brandy became a part of my life in the early ’80s, he was a mere seven weeks old. My wife, Deb, and I broke just about every rule training him, beginning the very first day we brought him home to our apartment in Chicago. The private breeder strongly recommended Brandy sleep in a dog crate, explaining something about dogs feeling more secure from predators in enclosed spaces. At 2 am during night one of Brandy’s life as a Mendelson, his howling didn’t sound so secure. Twenty minutes later he was sound asleep—in the middle of our queen-size bed.
When I took him for a walk the next morning, using a leash seemed a bit overprotective. The sidewalks were barricaded from the streets by foot-high snow walls, courtesy of the street plows. And Brandy wasn’t much bigger than my shoe. So we walked leashless to the corner store and back. It was such an uneventful trip that the leash stayed home for the next walk, and the next, and the next.
By the time we moved to Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood, a year and a half later, Brandy—now fully grown—knew sidewalks and intersections almost as well as I did. Our walks consisted of me reading the newspaper while he pranced not too far ahead or behind me.
I didn’t realize that those 20-minute morning, afternoon, and evening walks weren’t inconspicuous. I’d be out to dinner at a Shadyside restaurant or buying a paper at the neighborhood drug store or waiting for the bus downtown, when strangers would approach and say, “Aren’t you the guy who walks that dog while reading the newspaper?”
My walks with Brandy weren’t the only times with him that I left the leash at home. Together, we jogged the acres of wooded trails at nearby Frick Park. (Don’t tell Animal Control.) Brandy loved running there, especially after a rain. He would lag behind me; then suddenly, mud flying everywhere, he’d swoosh by me in full gallop, his mouth seemingly smiling, his tongue trailing in the wind, and his brown eyes wide, wide open.
I think it was television personality Larry King who once said that one of life’s great injustices is that dogs don’t have human life spans. When Brandy died at 13, his running days were long gone. But I remembered how much he loved Frick Park. So on a rainy afternoon I took his ashes there. When I began to sprinkle them along the trail, something incredible happened. The sun peeked out of nowhere and the wind kicked up. His ashes, rather than falling from my hand onto the ground below, took off in the wind, like they were running the path. I laughed and cried at the same time.
Since then, I’m not too skeptical when I learn of mystical occurrences such as what Dennis and Linda Hurwitz experienced and I reported on in The Chase for Beauty.
“We’re just one story, but we hope that our story and revealing details and intimate aspects of our story will make others committed to making their lives work on a personal and professional level.”
In the winter, you’ll often see articles about coping with grief during the holidays; but times such as Father’s Day can be just as difficult, especially for those who have lost a child.
The following article from CIGNA talks about struggling with Father’s Day.
“Father’s Day is a time of celebration and love, but for some it can also be a time of great heartache.”
I’m writing to you from the little known town of Ridgway, Pennsylvania. When I was thirteen years old, I lost my older and only brother to a fatal drug overdose. In towns like these, drug abuse is rampant. I think when most people think of the word “drugs”, they think of big cities, but, drug abuse in small towns is sky high. My brother was a heroin addict, he died when he was twenty-one. My older sister, was also using heroin at the time, and has been off and on ever since.
The devastation my family went through, and is still going through, from this trauma is unbelievable. I have spent time in and out of mental health facilities, trying to cope with my loss. The struggle to gain control brought out the manic-depressive in me, and I have been on medication for years.
I am now a 24 year old woman, who, by the grace of God, has never been involved with drugs or alcohol. I took a positive road, enrolling at Penn State to major in treating addicts. My home phone number is like a hotline for people needing help, and although my days are spent working to improve the quality of lives for others, in the end I feel so blessed to be making a difference in my community.
About four years ago, I became very ill. I was diagnosed with a disease in my spinal column, which breaks down the discs in my back and neck until they shatter. My muscles throughout my body are deteriorating, and my bones and joints are starting to give. There are days when I am bed bound, and on days like these, it takes every bit of mental strength not to take my own life. But, I have to have faith in the reasoning behind it. Every time I feel like I’m ready to give up, someone calls for help. And by someone calling my name out, it’s almost like angels telling me, “Hey, we ain’t ready for you to leave yet. We need you here. Stick around and see.” So I do.
… The one thing I feel definite traces of is my bold, sort of romanticist ideals. The funny thing is, a lot of people equate romantics with lost idealists, and really that is not it at all.
Romantics are realists who grasp opportunities, take a couple risks … go a little beyond what’s secure and safe so that maybe they can end up with something special and a little out of the ordinary. These days, people are so set in being down to earth and on the straight and narrow, that they often block out or ignore something good or special because it might be dangerous. After all, people can turn on you, or expect total commitment, something might go wrong …. I learned that if I was gonna have some good things to say about my life, I’d have to take some risks …. I had a stronger, deep down determination to find something special.
… The one thing I feel definite traces of is my bold, sort of romanticist ideals. The funny thing is, a lot of people equate romantics with lost idealists, and really that is not it at all.