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Friendship

Apr 06 2021

The days after Easter at Blyss

It was just Easter on Sunday, and on Saturday, I spent the day with my son and his wife at the home of his wife’s parents with the baby, my grand-daughter, Piper Starling.  It was a fun day because  I got to hold the baby a lot, and she likes me to hold her.  In addition to that, many people have commented that of everyone there, she resembled me the most, even some Facebook friends commented on the resemblance.  She is very verbally precocious and charming.  My son made a delicious leg of lamb, and I bought a very special decorated cake for Easter in the shape of an Easter egg from the very creative, upscale bakery in Summit, Natale’s.  On Sunday, I was invited to an Easter dinner with my sister and her family, including her son Logan, who happens to be my God-son, whom I love very much.  I had not seen Logan in about two years due to the COVID quarantine.  It was a lot of emotional stimulation and excitement for one weekend.

I posted pictures from both days on Facebook, happy pictures and posts.  I have not been well since my sudden, forced separation from my last boyfriend of one year on Valentine’s Day weekend.   Last week would have been our first anniversary of meeting face-to-face, a joyous occasion, allowing us to be in quarantine together.  I have to ask myself why I am such a loser in my relationships with men.  It is the ruination of my happiness and my life.  I wish it would just end and be over because I cannot take the pain and the loneliness anymore.  The last one swore we would be forever so I am shaken to the core this time.  He has since ghosted me.   I don’t know how someone does that.

But I have my beloved Kensey, who makes me very happy.  She is always there for me with her emotional support.  Moreover, I will be attending the spring dog shows, both locally on the first weekend in May, and in Ohio, where the Borzoi Club of America will be holding its specialty show during the last week of May.  These are reasons for joy.  I will be among friends and their borzoi, and being happy.  I will see many people whom I only see at this show, and it will warm my heart.

If only my boyfriend had not abandoned me in February, this could have been such a happy time.   He is a hard hearted person, one has to have a heart of stone to act the way he acts, knowing how much I loved him.  But we can only be who we are, and that is who he is.  People do what they want to do.  He needs to be free of the ties that bind in a relationship whereas I need to be held close and loved. And I still love him so much I could die of it.

Written by Lorene · Categorized: Borzoi, Dogs, Family Lilfe, Friendship, Grief, Love, Morals&Ethics, Travel

Mar 30 2021

Remembering Bob and Opal at Blyss

This month, March, is the tenth anniversary of my husband, Bob’s, death.  I find myself recalling him a great deal, what we were doing when we learned he was sick, and how little time we had left together, of  how he was robbed.  He had another great love in his life, greater than his for me, that being his two sons.  They were just entering adult life when he died.  He did not see them grow into young men, get married, and have children of their own.  I think he would have truly enjoyed that.  I believe he would have found the thrilling bliss in that that I found with the borzoi, although he did love his borzoi, too.  For me, I learned I never really knew what love was, never having had it growing up as a child.

My childhood was an ordeal of survival behind enemy lines, with parents ruling the house like they were Gestapo agents, imprisoning their children, ruling them with what can only be described as a rule book that grew thicker with every passing day.

Their favorite adages were: Spare the rod, spoil the child; and, You should only kiss your children when they are asleep.  They did not notice that their three children were growing up despising them and being totally self destructive.  They were too busy being angry all the time, with one another, and their offspring.    Somehow, sadly, we survived.

I understand Bob had a happy childhood, with laid back and easy going parents.  He, and all his siblings, always appeared to have smiles on their faces.  My siblings and I were profoundly emotionally disturbed, and did not wear smiles well.  We looked rather ghoulish with smiles on our faces, so we practiced looking in mirrors trying to look intelligent or serious instead.  It seems particularly sad that  I, who am so damaged, am left alive while Bob had to die ten years ago.  I feel so sorry for him that he had to miss so much happy, quality, family time.    I know how precious it is, but I had to learn about it from borzoi.

Borzoi taught me about love, human love.  I thought I loved Bob when I married him, but I had been made too damaged by my mother to be able to love anyone again.  It was fun and easy to love the borzoi.  When I look back at my old photographs with them, I don’t recognize myself.  I look so healthy, and am always beaming in a huge smile I cannot diminish.  In January, 2005, we  bought Opal.  I became manic with joy.  Eighteen months later she died, and I crashed into a devastating depression and have never been the same again.  I cannot forget what I lost when she died, my greatest loss, my heart itself, my joy that only she brought me.   I have read accounts like this by  other people sometimes on FB, not often, because usually people have multiple borzoi and the others help the owner get over the loss.  However, sometimes, a kennel will have one of those very extraordinary borzoi that transcends who and what it is, and when the owner writes about it, I recognize and understand what has happened to them.

Somehow, I am learning to love and smile, because I have grown from that place.  In the process, I have learned that Opal made a difference in my life, by enabling me, after almost 15 years, me to experience love and joy again.  I do not mourn her, I celebrate her, every day.  I was the luckiest person in the world to have had her.  I believe we will be reunited upon my death.  Opal is my definition of heaven.  Someday, when she comes up to me and looks up, and then hit me with her paw, like she used to, then, she will never be far away again.

Written by Lorene · Categorized: Borzoi, Depression, Dogs, Family Lilfe, Friendship, Grief, Love, Opal, Suburban Landscapes, Suburbs

Mar 26 2021

“They call me Mimi but my name is Lucia….”

I have been having a busy week.  I had my six month checkup for my lung cancer surgery last September, with a CAT-Scan with contrast media, and follow up with the surgeon.  I am very aware that breathing is a different experience for me, and not for the better, but I am adjusting.  I even gained five pounds, which is a significant for me.

My chronic anorexia, and the experience of being inexplicably abandoned by someone who swore his love and commitment to me, only to be followed up by  ghosting me, made the recovery almost impossible.  Without love, it took away my strength to recover, and my will to live.  But I am made of tougher stuff and survived in spite of it.

Today is very early spring, and I have reason for optimism and looking ahead.   I am attaching a photo of my son and my grand-daughter, Piper Starling Connolly, who visited me a week ago, making me very happy.  Kensie is standing by my side, where she can always be found.

I am reminded of Mimi’s aria in Act. 1 of the opera, La Boheme, set in Paris, my favorite city in the world.   I would like to share it as an ode to spring for all of us, and to my own victory over death and despair. Mimi is forced to face her own mortality by the end of Act 3, as shall we all.  But in Act I, there is flirting, laughter, and the hope that only comes in spring.  Find it on YouTube to listen to the beautiful melody.  The words follow:

“They call me Mimi, but my name is Lucy.

I embroider flowers, roses and lilies on silk.

I am peaceful and happy; it is my pass time.

I like these things.  They have so sweet a smell,

They speak of love, of spring, of chimera, these things

That have poetic names….. do you understand me?

Yes, they call me Mimi, why, I do not know….

Alone, I make my lunch for myself,

I do not always go to mass.

But I pray a lot to the Lord.

I live alone and cook for myself.  Alone….

But when the thaw comes, the first sun is mine!

The first kiss of April is mine!

Rose buds in a vase, leaf and buds

I watch them.  The flowers I make,

They do not have an odor

Rose buds in a vase,

Leaf by leaf, I watch it

The gentle perfume of a flower!

But the flowers I make

Ah me, they do not have any odor!

About me, I would not know how to tell.

I am only your neighbor come to bother you!”

From Act I of the Italian opera La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini

Libretto: Giuseppe Giacosa

Written by Lorene · Categorized: Art, Borzoi, Culture, Depression, Dogs, Drama, Eating Disorder, Family Lilfe, Food, Friendship, Grief, Joy, Love, Opera, Religion

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