“I can’t. This is just too . . .” The word dangerous unexpectedly popped into my mind. I mentally swept it under the rug. “Awkward. But thank you for the drink.”
I stood up. Luke did the same but more quickly. He reached out as if he meant to grab my arm, but I shifted to the side, avoiding his touch.
“Was it because I asked about your ex? Hey, none of my business. We don’t have to talk about it. We can talk about old movies. Or our favorite books, or golf . . .”
“Golf?”
“Golf. Goldfish. Anything you want. We can sit here and exchange recipes for all I care, just please, Grace. Sit back down. You can’t go.”
He sounded a little desperate. I frowned.
“Why not?”
“Because of that.”
He pointed across the restaurant. Two servers were walking toward our table with enormous platters of seafood.
“You were late, so I went ahead and ordered about eighty dollars’ worth of appetizers,” he explained. “I can’t eat all that by myself. But if you leave, I’ll have to. I am a product of my hardscrabble, clear-your-plate-because-children-are-starving-in-the-third-world upbringing. So I’ll have no choice. Come on, Grace. Help me out here.”
His voice was pleading. And charming. So charming that I had to smile a little. Luke walked around to my side of the table and pulled my chair out again.
“You said you like oysters, right?”
Chapter 5
Nan
If Nelson were human, I’d have given him a cup of tea and a peach turnover—my standard protocol for people who’ve suffered a loss. But dogs are different. Suffering comes as more of a shock to dogs because they can’t see it coming. Even when unexpected, people have a basic understanding that tragedy comes to everyone eventually and so are more readily comforted by small acts of kindness.
Like people, dogs experience grief in different ways. Some move through it quickly, attaching themselves to someone new so easily that it seems they barely miss the someone who came before. I’m not saying that a dog who attaches quickly to a new human didn’t feel love for the one who passed, far from it, but over the years I’ve noticed that those who had suffered more before their adoption, and were rescued from some traumatic situation, tend to grieve longer and more deeply than most.
What I knew of Nelson’s history, related to me by a neighbor familiar with his situation, bore this out. Nelson was just a puppy when Helen Find, his departed owner, discovered him shivering and abandoned by some garbage cans near her garage. He was worm-ridden, flea-infested, and so skinny that Helen assumed he was feral. But when she reached out her hand, the pup got down low and scooted toward her on his belly, frightened, but so eager for love and affection that he took the risk.
From that moment on, Helen and the dog were inseparable, absolutely devoted to each another.
“When the cancer got so bad,” the neighbor said, “Helen refused to go to the hospital unless Nelson could come along. Of course, they couldn’t do that, so the doctors called hospice. It was too late by then anyway. Do you know that dog never left her side? Not for one minute? And when she finally passed, he whined and cried like his heart was broken. It was almost human. Never saw anything like it,” he said.
Helen Find’s neighbor sounded surprised. I wasn’t. I’d seen it before, and not just in dogs. Nelson and Helen’s story was one of true love. Most people don’t understand it because they’ve never experienced it. Those who have never forget. They can learn love and trust again, but it takes patience, understanding, and time. How much time? There’s no way of telling. You just have to wait.
The only thing I could do for Nelson at that moment was hold him. And so I did, stroking his black and silver head until he fell asleep; then I carried him across the room to Blixen, who had been watching patiently from her bed.
“Here you go, Blix,” I whispered.
Blix rolled onto her side and I tucked Nelson up close. Blixen curled herself into a C around Nelson’s body, sighed, and closed her eyes. Poor Nelson. I’ve fostered over a hundred dogs in my lifetime. It’s never easy to see them grieve. But it’s something I’m called to by temperament, experience, and circumstances.
My Jim was killed in a plane crash when I was only forty-two, so I’m acquainted with grief. But Jim and I had a good life. Apart from our time together being too short, I have no regrets. Jim left me with four wonderful reasons to go on living too.
Jim Junior, whom we called James, was twelve when his dad died. Chrissy, Matt, and Dani were ten, eight, and five. Later, I adopted three more children, Kyle, Brianna, and Emily—all teenagers when they came. Older kids can be hard to place, but they deserve stable homes too. I tried to provide that for all my kids—biological and adopted—as well as an education.
James is a radiologist and Chrissy went into teaching. Matt and Kyle went into business together, designing video games. Brianna is a social worker. Emily married Dan, who opened his own microbrewery near Bend. She’s a stay-at-home mom to two-year-old twin boys.
It gets lonely sometimes, now that the kids are grown. But I keep busy; in helping other people I help myself as well. I believe that everything, the good and the bad, happens for a reason and is part of something bigger—purpose with a capital P. I also believe we each have an individual purpose, lowercase p, that fits in with the grander plan, and that part of the reason we are here is to find it, because everyone matters; each person’s contribution, large or small, has an impact.
Losing Jim was just that, a loss, a terrible one. But in enduring that loss, I came to find my purpose—to comfort and nurture others, first our grieving children, then
