Snap By Snap

It is a sad time here at the Dobbs' house. On Friday, we had to say goodbye to our beloved Goldie. Eighteen months ago she was diagnosed with a slow growing cancer, and we were sure the end was coming. But she stayed fairly symptom free and happy until earlier this year. Then she began having more trouble with arthritis, and her heart began to be enlarged. Her eyes were clouded with cataracts and she was almost completely deaf. Still her life was very good. She ate (lived to eat, actually), loved to greet us when we got home (although she now often slept through our arrival), and love to take walks (shorter and slower but begged for nonetheless). Our Goldie aged gracefully, for the most part. Her face was completely white, but she was still a strikingly beautiful dog. As she aged she lost all inhibition when it came to trash cans, or raiding the pantry, and she had no problem at all barking at us to get what she wanted. She was almost 15.

On Friday she ran across the yard as she always did - to bark at passing kids - and injured her back leg. She could not put any pressure on it at all. I carried her inside, and we drove to the vet, her head in Amy's lap. She had torn a ligament on one of her back legs, completely disabling it. The injury that would require surgery to fix; a surgery she could not survive. Her age and her arthritis wouldn't let her manage on three legs, even if  her heart would have held out. We also knew that in the last few days her lungs had begun to fill with the fluid that marks true congestive heart failure. As much as we'd prepared, as much as we'd known it was coming, we weren't prepared in one hour's time to hear that it was the end. And it definitely was. The three of us cried and told her goodbye as the doctor injected her leg and she drifted quickly to sleep. It was wrenching.

There is such a fine line between life and death. One moment she was living, breathing, connecting, loving and the next all that is left is the shell. We drove home without a word. Shocked. And so began the grieving process.

We are still very much in the  midst of the grieving for our Goldie. Little things stop us in our tracks - like not putting a dish on the floor for her to lick. Thinking we see her or hear her in the house. Coming down in the middle of the night and finding the downstairs empty and silent. Watching a movie without once pausing to let Goldie out. But one thing that has really helped us in these first days is our photos. Looking at the snapshots of her life makes us miss her, but they also make us smile and tell stories, and remember what a very wonderful thing our relationship with her was.

Her portrait, ball, and collar now have a special place on the family photo shelf and Amy and I are going through photo albums, digital files, and the many stories Amy wrote about her when she was young. All of these will go into a book about Goldie, along with each of our memories. But as much as we'll love having the book - it will really be the process of writing it and compiling it that will be the healing for us.

The dark side of grief would have us retreat, withdraw, and avoid the pain . . . but these images from our years with Goldie draw us out of that place. There's more pain but also more joy in remembering her life as we sort photos, tell stories, laugh, and cry. Together.  It helps us move beyond remembering the death, to remembering the life. And what an exuberant, passionate, energetic, fun, and loving life it was.

I have a restless husband. That much is true. Every few weeks, an adventure is needed. And so yesterday we ventured south to the Hoosier National Forest for a hike. An hour and a half drive through lovely farmland and an eight mile bump down a Tower Ridge Road (gravel) brought us to the Sycamore Loop trail in the Charles Deem Wilderness area.


We started walking along an abandoned logging road that would lead us out to Terrill Cemetery, our first stop. It was gorgeous weather - 80 degrees and dry. The path stayed fairly level the entire hike and flat roadbed was easiest portion of the trail. It was odd to be walking out into what felt like the middle of nowhere and find a cemetery without a town. But what is now forested wilderness was once completely cleared by logging and settled by subsistence farmers. The land was not suited for farming, however, and the settlers struggled along. When the depression hit, the farms failed, the U.S. Forest Service acquired the lands, and the Civilian Conservation Corps began rehabilitating the land for recreational use. In 1982 the area was designated as a wilderness area and it is now managed by the Hoosier National Forest.


From the moment you step out of the forest into Terrill Cemetery, it is obvious that life was very different back then. The hard ground would not yield crops and farms did not flourish. Neither did children.


So many short lives. The adults rarely lived past 60, and the number of children buried there almost equaled the number of adults. Some children's parents were able have a lamb carved for their tombstone. Most could not. The Axsom family lost Dora, Dartha, Dorval, and Delphia all in 1931. It appears that when their one year old Betty died in 1939, they came back and placed this marker for all five of their lost children. Unimaginable.

Many of the families were so poor that their markers were quite crude - just local stone, hand carved. All that survives of some of these markers is a stump of stone. Who were they? What are their stories?

My parents took pictures of me - not a lot, but a few. In them I always looked happy and cute (believe it or not) and am dressed nicely. My brother, however, enjoyed capturing more  . . . authentic moments from my childhood. The snapshot above was taken one day when I wouldn't eat my oatmeal. This was the beginning of a no good, very bad day. I did not eat my oatmeal. I did not eat the peanut butter sandwich at lunch, and I did not eat my dinner. And so I sat. All day. And cried. And . . . won. This picture could be entered into the dictionary under 'stubborn.' Cleaning my plate remained a major issue during my childhood, and left me permanently adverse, even as an adult, to eating that last morsel at any meal. Some part of me was still refusing to give in, even though the battle was over long ago. Such useless stubbornness. Not until I began Weight Watchers recently did I find myself hungry enough and willing enough at mealtime to clean my plate . . . at least most of the time. I still can't see the point in eating Cauliflower.

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.                                    ~Henry Ward Beecher

I've had a little trouble getting into the Christmas spirit this year. Keep in mind that I love Christmas - I'm the type that has six boxes of Christmas decorations in the garage and thoroughly enjoys decorating the house, having family over, giving presents, watching Christmas movies . . . in short, I'm generally a Christmas junkie. But this year my brain is preoccupied with work and my bones are feeling a little tired.

So now we have the tree up, the house has slowly been decorated, and tonight we had a Christmas gathering for our small group (or maybe it's a medium group with 10 adults and 7 kidlets?). Earlier in the day I had to work and then ran a few errands on the way home. The traffic around shopping areas was truly horrendous, complete with angry drivers looking for parking spots and honking at older drivers when they hesitated a moment too long on where to turn. Stores are packed with worthless junk, waiting for us to plunk our plastic down in order to have one more bauble under that tree. If I see or hear "Happy Holidays" one more time . . .  well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that Christmas isn't really about the birth of the Savior anymore, it's a crummy commercial, to quote Ralphie. It's enough to make this Christmas junkie cynical. But here's the problem, I'm an idealist. I don't want to be a cynic.

Fortunately, the Christmas Spirit saved Christmas for me once again.

As I worked at the library today, a patron talked with me about her compassion for a homeless couple who were obviously living in their car, parked at the library this morning. She was hatching a plan for how to anonymously give them a cash Christmas gift. She'd been unemployed for two years at one point, and she knew how easy it was to lose it all.

As I walked into Kroger, I overhead a couple talking to each other, strategizing what they could do for someone who really needed help this Christmas. "Surely we could do something for them . . ."

And then as I checked out at Hobby Lobby, the young man working the register hummed a tune as he worked. The tune was "Joy to the World."  Such a simple thing, humming a tune. But of all the tunes, it was the one that so accurately describes the reason we celebrate. God's Son, sent to a sorrowing and suffering world. JOY to the world.


So maybe Christmas is all about commercialism for many people, but I'm going to focus on the people like the ones above who, whether they know it or not, embody the true Christmas Spirit. We give because He gave. We celebrate, because we've been given the best gift ever given.  If that's not worth twinkly lights and a festive mood, I don't know what is!

And just for fun, here are some ornaments with stories to go with them
First Christmas, nearly 28 years ago. I love this ornament. Every year it's the first one I look to find.
Also a first year ornament, this Rudolf (he's lost his red nose) was one of about a dozen handmade ornaments received as wedding presents from a friend who lived down the street from me growing up. For years we'd played up and down the street on bikes and in wagons until the street lights came on, and racked up endless trips to each other's front door: Can Paula play? Can Cheryl play? Through high school we drifted apart, but remained on friendly terms. Then out of the blue came this wonderful, thoughtful wedding present. About four of the original twelve ornaments have survived, and are on the tree every year.

When we first moved to Indianapolis, visiting the Children's Museum was a great treat. Every Christmas they have "Jolly Days" and when Amy was four, the three of us sat at a little table with little chairs and each made a bear ornament. We have all three bears on the tree every year. Amy's bear is my favorite, not only because of the cute scrawl on the back, but also because she made the bear's face like a doggy. Everything was a dog when Amy was little. Every preschool craft, every story character, everything.
When Amy was young, her Aunt Debbie sent her a doggy ornament every year. Amy will have a nice collection to start her tree when she gets her first place. Unfortunately the Dalmatians ornament above is a little worse for the wear. One year the mommy dalmation lost one ear. Then the other. Then one year we found a stray puppy head rolling around the bottom of the ornament box. For some reason, this is hilarious to Amy and I. It looks to us like those poor puppies just flew down that sledding hill so fast, that it blew Mom's ears right off! We have a sick sense of humor, we realize.
Our latest injured ornament used to be a star. Hannah, a little friend of ours down the street made it for us two years ago out of salt dough. Friday night I heard a CRUNCH from the front room. There was Goldie, crunching away on the sad remains of the star. She couldn't understand why I was upset, since I was the one who was silly enough to hang a cookie on the tree! We looked and found this one remaining point of the star still hanging on the tree. She ate it right off the branch! Years from now we'll smile when we look at this poor twinkle of a star, and remember our white faced doggy who still had a little puppy in her.

We just returned from a trip to Las Vegas, baby. Not really our kind of town, but we did really enjoy spending some quality time with family and spending a little time with the newest member of the family, Eric's beautiful wife Sara.

Eric, for those of you playing the homegame, is the first wonderfulness (Carolyn uses this term of affection for each of her grandchildren - in order of arrival they are the first, second, and third wonderfulnesses).  Eric has always had a great smile. But his grin widened by at least an inch when he met Sara about two years ago. We knew she was the one.

This has been the year of weddings! I wish I had photos of them all. First, we flew to California to see my nephew Cody wed Cassie, then our friend Kelly married her hubby Dan here in Indy. In October, Mark's old friend Greg (yes, our age - old people get married, too) was married, and then Eric and Sara wed in Las Vegas earlier this month. Each of these eight people had that silly grin. Happiness just spilling out all over. I remember that feeling. My face hurt from smiling by the end of our day:

In March, Cody and Cassie had a table at their reception with the wedding pictures of each of their parents and grandparents, which I thought was a really nice touch. There I saw a picture of my Mom and Dad's wedding that I had never seen before. So I took a picture of the picture (sorry for all the reflections on the glass. If you look closely, you can see my brother Gary's suit in the glass).

My Dad once told me that he married my Mom sooner than he would have, just to help her out of a difficult living situation with her family. But they both sure look very happy. I love the hat! And I love the cross in the background. Most of my memories of my Mom were from a time when she was sick and battling cancer. I love seeing this young, hopeful, beautiful woman looking straight at the camera!

Mark's parents were married in 1956. I asked Mark what the date of their wedding was, and he wasn't sure. So, in a fit of google addiction I typed in "Howard and Carolyn Dobbs wedding" (not expecting any results) - and do you know what??? Their wedding pictures are on youtube! You could have picked me up off the floor. Evidently a cousin digitized his parent's photos or slides and there was a batch from Howard and Carolyn's wedding. Wow. We live in an amazing age.

Be sure to compare the look on Howard's face with the look on Mark's face walking up the aisle with me. It's not a beaming grin. It's more of a completely pleased expression. Cute! Here's a still photo I had of Howard and Carolyn's wedding, and below that is the youtube of wedding pictures from their wedding . . . 54 years ago.



I love seeing those smiling faces. We were all probably naive, and certainly had no idea of what life would throw at us in the years ahead. And, if you had come up to any one of us and told us every bit of bad news we'd get in the next years, we'd still have grinned and gone forward. Because in that moment we all knew what Eric told us just after his wedding. He held up the new ring on his left hand, and said, "This is the best feeling in the world."

What is it about a moment like that? A moment that just instantly changes your perspective. The busy-ness fades and you slow down. Is it the bigness of the horizon? The constant and comforting routine of sunset and sunrise? Or the knowledge that all of our distractions really mean nothing in this larger picture. Somehow it's harder to gain perspective in the city. Why is that?

Take a drive. When we lived in Santa Barbara we could drive into the hills or along the coast. Here we have country fields and farms. In Los Angeles it was a little harder to get away, but it could be done. Get to the quiet. Find a vista that will give you perspective, and listen.

At the end of a too-busy week, Mark and I took a road trip. We were travelling to Cincinnati to participate in the wedding of Mark's boyhood friend. We took the slow road (52) to Cincy, and enjoyed every bit of it. I snapped some pictures with my new iphone, using my Hipstamatic App, which makes even boring pictures look kind of cool and old.  Yesterday it was dry and mostly brown, but the hipstamatic improved the shot quite a bit with its funky filters. The sky, however, was just as beautiful as pictured. Blue and full of cool fall breezes!