Marley & Me and Chad

***As promised in this blog long ago, two of Bernie's water dishes full of spring flowers, in her backyard. I love them like that. May 3, 2009***

Hey I'm sitting in Bernie's backyard now recuperating from a long bike ride to the lakes today, gotta love the Greenway. I have an 18.6oz bottle of Newscastle as my friend, and while not 40oz, it should have a brown paper bag for sure--though I probably look much more like an English bloke than an OG right about now.

Marley & Me was good, certainly no better and possibly a bit worse. Personally, I think they could have done a lot more with that movie--somehow they saw it necessary to turn it into a love story/kid story like every other freakin' movie Hollywood puts out. I thought the movie did a decent job subtly creating attention on the fact that a 12 to 15 year dog's lifespan covers many, many different periods of an owner's life--unless you simply stay at home all the time and, well, play with your dog. In this case, these periods were young adulthood, marriage, couple jobs, having kids--all while having the same dog, Marley. I think any person with any retrospective slant to him or her takes some time toward the end of a dog's life to realize just how long--and short--10, 12, 15 years really is. A lot of stuff happens within those amounts of time, a lot. You have kids under your roof for 18 years. I had Bernie under mine for 14 years.

That's a long time.

And yes, I spent some of my time over the past couple years putting into perspective just how long Bernie's lifespan be representin'. I processed it, fully--I was 25 when I adopted Bernie, and I was two and a half months shy of 40 when she died. I had more than a half dozen jobs within that period of time, began and finished grad school, lived in three different states, and on and on. It's a long time, and it was important to realize--before Bernie actually passed--that a symbol of a large chunk of my life, timewise, was going to be gone.

It could've induced a midlife crisis, or something similar.

That's one reason I went light on the sentiment. She was my last real link to my time in California, I knew that, but that thought was utterly passe by the time she died. I knew that while my time with Bernie went by way too fast, it was actually a really long time--it's a paradox I still can't quite balance within my mind.

For the most part, though, my thoughts had come full circle come January 7, 2009. I knew where I had been, where I was, and where I am going. I knew it wasn't so much about what I'd lost when she passed away as it was what I'd gained from her being here all those years, with me.

I happily and pridefully say, it was the best relationship I've ever had, Bernie & Me.