Comfort Stones

I was on the phone with my dad last night. It was a long talk, it's been a rough week. You guys never believe me about February, but then it comes over and blows the house down.

Near the end of the chat he says, I'm going to ask you something. Promise not to be mad?

I declined the promise. That is the least fair of all the questions - you're on the defensive before you even know what's coming. I promised to try.

He asked, and it was a long question, the kind you have to clarify at the end, so I said, You want to know if I'm warm? Yes, he said. Comforting. He wanted to know if I could be comforting.

I wasn't mad. It's a weird thing to be asked, because we all assume that we are, we can be, when it counts. I assume that I am, and I can be. When it counts.

It was a fair question. I haven't had much opportunity to comfort my father; when the worst things happened, I was always far away.

There are levels of concern there, I can see that. Concern for me, concern for the people I love, who need comfort. And concern as a parent, did I set them up right, what did they take away.

We had been talking about people, but then we were talking about dogs. Our dogs define us, when we remember their lives, we're remembering our own. We remembered all the way back to the first dog, the one there when I was born. He said he had some guilt, how life got in the way of their bond, the one in the beginning, before the kids and the jobs and the school and... life.

That's not what it looks like from my perspective. I see a member of the family, who was loved, and nursed, and partnered for adventures, who grew with us, who was then loved more. So much that 25 years later, she is still loved, and cared for, and nursed, in the heart of someone she loved right back.

He said he wished he'd done better by her. I doubt that's what she wishes. I understand why people believe in things. It would be something to know these messages were getting through. It would be comforting.

We all think we could have done better, because we're cursed with remembering everything we've done wrong. We don't give each other enough credit for what we learn, the good we do in between the moments we're fucking up. I think dogs do - or they're just blessed with limited memory - and that's why we love them so much. We'll allow them to judge us by all the things we've done right. It's a gift we infrequently give ourselves.

I think I can only comfort in the abstract. So, it was a fair question.

I'll be coming back to this.