Skip to main content

The New Leash


She can’t bear Charlie’s impossibly dark, beseeching eyes. He wants to go for a walk – needs to prance and run to the park, but she can’t do it.

She scratches the fur behind his ears. “Sorry. Daddy’s not here for walkies and I can’t… can’t...”

She’s tried to be brave for Charlie. She trembles, sickened by the gift a well-meaning friend brought when Joe died. This one’s blue. Even hanging behind the door where she can’t see it, she smells the leather. It reminds her of the last time she saw the old red leash. And how Joe used it.  


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In the Manger with Jesus

  Young children have a hard time understanding complex ideas and things they can’t see. This is why they say the darndest things as adults struggle to explain concepts like God, death, and the small microbes that live on their grubby little fingers which they should wash before supper. My nephew, we’ll call him Sebastien, was four years old when my father passed away. Dad had Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, and while he had trouble breathing and didn't have much energy, he always had time to read a story or share some red grapes with Sebastien. There were lots of naps in the big easy chair with Grampa. When Dad got sicker, the chair was moved out of the front room to make way for a hospital bed. Dad died on December 24, 2009, as my brother and I held his hands and my mother stroked his face.   At Sebastien’s house, his mother struggled to explain what had happened. Why there would be no more naps, stories or grapes with Grampa. “His get-better-bed didn’t work,” s...
9 comments
Read more

Life with Neville

  Neville and I exist in a drafty, clapboard house at the end of a gravel road. We don’t see much of the neighbours. It’s conversation-worthy if a car goes by or, more likely, turns in our lane to avoid the dead end ahead. Neville mostly does his own thing and, especially in the winter, I rarely see another human being outside of the monthly trip to town. The view from every window is white and devoid of beauty.   The interior landscape is just as bleak. I dust, mop and wipe, yet see only a film of gray blanketing my home. Neville and I sleep in the same bed and eat our meals together, but the deeper connection we once had has now also accumulated a hazy grey-white patina. He used to gaze lovingly into my eyes, sit cuddling close, and pay attention to whatever I was doing, angling for my attention. Now Neville looks at me when supper is late. In lieu of meaningful looks, caresses or conversation, I tell him to do the thing he’s already doing. It gives me the illusion that he...
2 comments
Read more

Red

  Mother summons me to her office on Monday morning to scold me and  I’m transported back in time. I’m five years old. Her red pinched lips are shouting and her red-tipped finger is wagging at me. You horrible bad girl, where is Mother’s sweater? What did you do with it?   I’d taken it to bed with me, to feel something soft that smelled like her mix of menthol cigarettes and Chanel Number Five.   While she and the rest of the family were skiing in Mount Tremblant, I’d explored our big empty house, including Mother’s walk-in closet. The sweater, cashmere, lay crumpled on the floor. I hid there, amongst her clothes, shoes, purses and scarves, missing my family – my father who was rarely home but smiled and sometimes told me stories; my boisterous teenage brothers, who were rarely home but sometimes played games with me; and my mother who was always home and whom I tried so very hard to emulate and please. I hid the sweater under a pillow in my frilly pink bedroom. Rosi...
Post a Comment
Read more