Words of comfort by my great friend, borzoi breeder, Mary Childs.

“Remember I have not left.

I have but stepped into the next room of eternity and I will be there awaiting your visit .

No one is ever gone as long as someone remembers them.”

Yesterday, I learned that my beloved sister-in-law, Leslie Weeks (nee Dwyer), passed way unexpectedly. 

I am beyond grief stricken by her loss.  We stayed in touch regularly after the death of my husband, her brother, eleven years ago.  It was such a pleasure speaking with her, I always looked forward to and enjoyed our many phone calls, and we shared common interests, especially the sport of purebred dog.  We each put dogs front and center in our lives.  Her breeds were collies and Shetland sheep dogs, and I too always loved collies, although I never had one, but I am best known for my deep love for borzoi, an affection she also shared.  I regret I do not have a photo of Leslie to share, she was a very pretty woman, with wheat colored hair, beautiful blue eyes, and a face always ready to smile. 

I wish I could have been more like her but of course, I am not.  Leslie was no-frills, down to basics, few words, always kind, had an infinite love for humanity.  Leslie believed in the Bible, and did missionary work whereby she had to learn French in order to bring the word of God to French speaking people through her Church.  Widowed many years ago, she never wavered in her fidelity to and absolute love for her deceased husband and remained faithful to him all the remaining years of her life.  She was completely stoic and non-materialistic, but she allowed me, The Material Girl, to give her birthday gifts and Christmas presents which she allowed herself to accept.

Her memory will always remain with me, and she will be a role model for how I can be a person more like her, as a religious woman, as a dog owner, and as a friend to others.  Sadly, I am unable to find any photographs.

May the perpetual light shine upon her.

Conclusion by Mary Elizabeth Fry

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there.  I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow

I am the diamond glint on snow.

I am the sunlight on the ripened grain

I am the gentle autumn rain

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at  night

Do not stand at my grave and cry

I am not there.  I did not die.

When Facebook posted a photograph of my homebred borzoi puppy , Tresor Majenkir O’Blyss, “Tresor”, it opened up a well of memories for me. I was shown photographed with him as an almost yearling. His photo album can be seen on my website, www.Blysskennels.us. But seeing the photo had the effect of overwhelming me with jarring, powerful emotions, almost too painful to bear. Tresor is gone now, almost four years, taken too soon at nine years of age. His famous littermate, Magnus, known as Max, had recently had the horrible misfortune of dying alone in a kennel in Japan when his owners were through campaigning him, rather than sending him home to me in New Jersey. For all he did for them and their borzoi breeding program, I had wanted him to be kept as a house dog upon retirement if he could not have been returned, and I was assured that would be the case.

Getting back to the Facebook memory photo of Tresor, it evoked these past events and made them very fresh, not that they are ever far from my memory. I posted them with the following message.

“Facebook found this memory for me today of My Boy,Tresor, the puppy I bred from the only Blyss Kennels litter, as a youngster. He is gone several years now, important to only me, a footnote in his dam’s pedigree since his littermate, some called “Max”, made a big mark. I am surrounded with his photos and paintings, and we are together in spirit in this lonely life I live. I wish he could have stayed with me longer because the pain of missing him grows larger every day. To me he had no equal. I knew what real love was for a brief time, then I lost it. Run free, Tresor, and wait for me in Heaven.”

Thank you, my Blog readers, for letting me share these memories with you and letting my past borzoi live.

To belong has always been difficult and elusive for me.  I was always aware of being marginalized, at home, at work, in social groups.  I felt different from those around me and that my passions were not those of others.  I did not even know people who shared my passions, that included classical music, country life, fine art and literature and of course animals, primarily dogs and horses.  This was not the life into which I was born.  Nor was it the social world into which I was placed, in the New Jersey post WWII suburbs of Union County, just out of reach of the old cities where my parents grew up, Newark and Elizabeth, and newly placed in upwardly mobile suburbs, trying to escape the poverty of their childhoods.  I felt I belonged in the stories of the English novels I read about the aristocracy or village life, or the movies I saw on television, mostly westerns.  I lived with the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach that somehow a terrible mistake had been made and I did not belong where I was and to whom I was with, in other words, my family.  Sadly, it was a feeling that never went away and only grew lager through the years of my life.

I worked on getting my life right as an adult after college and later graduate school when I had more control over career selection and the kinds of people I would later work with and come to know.  It was better, and I believed I was happier. However, it was still hard work to belong. I still felt marginalized off to the side, and that I wanted to talk about subjects that were of no interest to anyone else.  During my first job, I was saving money to buy a horse.  That consumed me, and I was very passionate about that.  The horse made me happy for a while when it came to pass, but the work and expense did not fit in with my schedule and life responsibilities, so I had to give it up.  I tried to broaden my outlook of what constituted happiness, and focused on getting married. 

I married twice more, and it was not until I was with my second husband, still feeling marginalized, that we had the opportunity to act boldly, inspired by our Unitarian Minister, Vanessa Southern’s call, to Live Boldly.  I had recently turned fifty, and it was the Millennium, the world felt drunk with optimism.  Suddenly, my husband and I had a chance encounter with a man who was selling a young male borzoi, and we leapt at the opportunity to buy him.  Then, we purchased several more borzoi to live with, show and later breed.  Through the love and beauty of these sublime creatures,  I found my peace when I found my dogs and their breeders became my friends.  It was here I belonged.