If by the example of her joy and innocence, a dog can greatly change two lives for the better, then no life is little, and every life is big. The mystery of life is the source of its wonder, and the wonder of life is what makes it so worth living.
ON THE IMPORTANCE of the human-dog bond and on the reason why we give our hearts to them knowing what is to come, a character in my novel The Darkest Evening of the Year says this:
“Dogs’ lives are short, too short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you’re going to lose a dog, and there’s going to be great anguish, so you live fully in the moment with her, never fail to share her joy or delight in her innocence, because you can’t support the illusion that a dog can be your lifelong companion. There’s such beauty in the hard honesty of that, in accepting and giving love while always aware it comes with an unbearable price. Maybe loving dogs is a way we do penance for all the other illusions we allow ourselves and for the mistakes we make because of those illusions.”
everafter…
FOLLOWING TRIXIE’S PASSING, I asked Linda Valliant if CCI would consider doing Gerda and me a great favor. I hoped they might add Trixie’s name to the monument sign at the entrance to the Southwest Chapter’s Oceanside campus. This dog, after all, inspired in Gerda and me greater giving than we had done before, and Trixie’s writing career pays catastrophic medical bills for the dogs of people with disabilities. The sign now includes her name, and each time I see it, I see the proof that her little life, like every life, changed the lives of others, and I take heart that I will meet her again in a place of wonder, at the center of the mystery around which our existence eternally revolves.
Credits
Photographs by Monique Stauder
Copyright
A BIG LITTLE LIFE. Copyright © 2009 Dean Koontz. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Hyperion e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition July 2009 ISBN 978-1-4013-9455-4
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Dean Koontz, A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog
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