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Virus-free. www.avg.com |
Home to Beautiful Borzois in the Watchung Mountains in Mountainside, New Jersey
Virus-free. www.avg.com |
Virus-free. www.avg.com |
Today, I awoke slowly. Over the weekend, it was time to turn the clocks ahead so we are in “Daylight Savings Time”, that gives us more sunlight in the afternoon and evening. That gives me time to give my dog a second or third walk in the late afternoon or after dinner. It is usually the warmer time of year, so I am out more, working in my garden or talking to the passers by, or my neighbors. My home, and home town, are particularly conducive to this. All I have to do is get up and live and I find myself enjoying the idyllic surroundings with which I am blessed.
I have been more blessed in past times because I had lived with several borzoi, as many as five or six at a time. That is a memory bourgeoning with bliss running over, especially when our litter was born. Then my last husband, Bob, was alive. Bob, who was taken from me almost violently, was ravaged by pancreatic cancer at the age of 56, ten years ago this week in 2021. I came across some photos this weekend during happy times, in particular, the time of our wedding in 2000. We looked so happy. I declared myself a “Millenium Bride”! looked so amazingly beautiful and young. I do not look that way anymore. The last twenty years have been cruel. I have had cancer twice, and lived through the ravages of two nervous breakdowns. Sadly, I recovered and did well on my own after Bob was gone, and missed him terribly, knowing we would have been happy together again, but it was too late. Following his passing, I have just endured ten years of bitter loneliness as I have dated one loser, liar, basket case cripple after another, looking for love. I am a woman who craves human love, never having had it as a child.
Today, I am no longer able to keep borzoi, I am just too frail from having lost so much weight during my illnesses. I am still active, however, in my clubs, I participate in Meet the Breeds when it is in NY City, and I am an active member of the Borzoi Club of America. However, I have ventured into the world of Silken Windhounds and I am currently living with the irresistible “Kensie”, from the Wind ‘n Satin Kennel of Mary Childs in Ohio. A more precious creature with a princess attitude cannot be found. She is loved and adored by all who meet her. She knew instantly I was her person and what her job was. She is a jewel of a dog, so much like a borzoi in every way, just half the size. I will admit, she does not have the “drama” of a borzoi, but in every way, she is just perfect. I was profoundly depressed when she came. My maintenance medications were all increased, and with her presence in the home, and the structure caring for another living creature creates in your life, I began to feel better quickly. The same thing that would have made me happy as a child makes me happy as an elderly woman today.
My world as I knew it for some time now was shattered by some traumatic news from a friend, no, a man I believed in. The end result was him asking me not to contact him anymore. No explanation was given, just that.
I had so much I wanted to say, yet that option was denied. I was in enormous emotional pain. I guess I brought it upon myself, I just don’t know how. I have no one else to blame. Unable to write to him, yet having so much to say, I remembered he is a Facebook “Friend”, still! I posted messages to him and about him and for him on my public page, knowing he would read them. They are my poems, so I am saving them here.
Although many other Facebook Friends reacted with concern, the gentleman remained silent. Perhaps he was never a friend. I can’t seem to keep my love life from crashing and burning around me. My only loyal loves have been with my dogs since 2002, especially my borzoi, and also my Black Lab, and now my Silken, Kenzie. And that makes me glad, they are so much more worthy of my love than they ever were.
In the ten years I have been a widow, I have been surprising how many men have been turned off by me having dogs. True, I had multiple, very large dogs, and men can’t handle that kind of competition. And, I will always put my dogs before any man, and my passion for them, the borzoi breed in particular, dog shows, breeding, the whole thing, before any man. My life revolves around my passion for dogs, my borzoi, and now my Silken Windhound, Kensie. It is how I deal with my pain. It is a lot for a man to compete with. Where I succeed with dogs, I fail with men. My poems, unedited words from my soul, follow.
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So easy to love
So hard to lose
Come back.
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Today is a wintry cold day in March
Soon it will be spring again to bring me joy
And maybe hearts will heal.
But for now, only lonely,
A heart dies slowly in place
One day at a time.