Arthur

So I want to be really real here.  That’s part of what this whole thing is about for me, being honest about what it’s really like being a widow and dealing with life now.

That being said, I am afraid to let you all in to how dark it can really be.  This has been an incredibly hard week, with it just being the anniversary.  For my 5^th ever post I’m just not quite ready to let you all see that. 

I have been trying to think about all of the things that I’m thankful for in an effort to cheer myself up in this dark place.

I thought I would share with you one of the big ones. 

I have a very special little dog, his name is Arthur.

We got Arthur two years ago.  I begged for a dog the whole first year we were married.  For some reason, this was a battle that I was unable to win for awhile, which was surprising, because I always won.  But every time I would bring it up there was something that needed to be done first, like cleaning my room (I’m not kidding).  Plus, it’s expensive to have a dog and we didn’t have ANY money.

So, I won an Iphone from KBCO.  Fortunately for me, they gave me the money rather than the actual phone, and I wanted to spend my prize money on a puppy.

Two years ago in August, both my sisters moved away from Denver in the same week.  Unprepared for how sad this would make me (I woke up crying every morning for a couple of weeks), Sawan said “I think we should get a dog.”  I was of course overjoyed. We called every breeder in the paper and found one that had one male puppy left from their last litter.  We had to drive all the way out to Burlington (almost to the Kansas border) to get him, but it was worth it.  He was always meant to be my dog, but I didn’t get to go to pick him up, and by the time the drive home was over, he had wrapped himself securely around Sawan’s little finger and he was most certainly his dog.

Sawan did all of the training (well, most of it), spent the first few nights with him crying on the couch (the puppy, not Sawan) and we loved being dog parents.  He went with us everywhere. 

Now he is just my dog, but he is my constant companion and I don’t know what I’d do without him, not sure how I would have made it through this last year if I didn’t have him.

He is a Westie.  He looks like a white Scottie.  He answers to all manner of names, given my family’s penchant for nicknames.  Sawan and I always called him “the Fella,” so he answers to that, as well as Phil, a derivative of that, and Artie, Arturo, Tudie, Artie Mortie (a reference to a hilarious Michael Caine movie, called “Without a Clue” that’s a Sherlock Holmes spoof and I highly recommend) and Chavez, his new one, that my cousin Nick has given him.

He follows me everywhere, including the bathroom, and our door doesn’t close (see landlord issues in previous posts), so he pushes the door wide open, which has never really been an issue, due to the fact that my roommate is my sister and she’s never really home at the same time as me anyway, but recently gave me pause when I had a houseguest…

He knows when I’m sad and immediately comes to comfort me, by licking my tears, then laying his head on my chest in a “hug”.

He sleeps with me in my bed, and it’s a huge comfort to know that I’m not alone there.  He is the cutest thing in the morning, waking up and kissing my face, then doing his downward dog yoga stretching, then making his loud yawn and sticking his tongue out, Snoopy style.

He begs by the door to go with me when I leave, and on the occasion that he doesn’t get to go, he runs to the window and sticks his head out of the blinds to watch me leave.   When I come home, often 8 hrs later from work, he’s sitting there with his head out of the blinds watching for me, prompting me to hope that he wasn’t waiting there ALL day. 

He lets me hold him like a baby and smother him with affection and I am just so thankful for this little bundle of comfort.