I think I once wrote that I ebb and flow with some things. I guess that is true here. Today has been a hard day, but it has been a day – and I often forget a lot of people would be happy with that. I mean it has not been a day with a death announcement or a medical diagnosis or one even of a headache.

I have been missing Shane. It is as if the numbness of grief has worn off and the reality of it has set in. So much was wrapped up in that dog – connections not unlike the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

I can see his face smiling at me and I see it in that moment right after he died, when he was so warm and so still. I didn’t want to disturb him while we waited for the vet to arrange the pain shot; I knew that dogs try to the very end to respond to people close to them. I thought it best to let him be alone and to not stimulate him. He was behind the loveseat a few feet from me. And then he died alone, without my hand on him.

I never wanted that.

People have said to me: He’s gone and he’s not coming back. It’s true, but it hurts so bad.

Shane was Quentin’s dog. Shane was young when Sydney was old and it was to a young Sydney my father spoke his last lucid words. When Mother became ill, she looked at the old dog who had come to the sofa and said, “So, you’ve come to see me, Sydney.”

Shane came to live with us and Sidney accepted him, but made him leave my presence every evening; the night belonged to me and Sydney. Cameron was Shane’s buddy; they fussed over each other. Many a Wubba was thrown thousands of times. And Cameron cried because he couldn’t do anything to help Shane in the end.

WE still cry . . . and mmaybe he’s not coming back because he never left our hearts. He’s still here.