2016-09-25 - 6:47 p.m.

STILL ALIVE

I have a geriatric cocker spaniel named Abby. She is never further away from me than about 15 feet. Where I go, she goes. My dorg.

I had a wonderful husband who, though he was wonderful in an overwhelming number of ways, had a really big struggle with jealousy. He wanted my time. ALL of my time.

Due to this, Mike never really liked Abby very much. In fact, it became obvious quite early in our relationship (but after the vows, of course, you sly and cautious debil, Mike)that he didn't like Abby at ALL. He would complain about her (in jest, to prevent war, but meaning EVERY word)and say things that indicated that he might be happy to find her deceased some bright morning.

When the Croods came out, a movie about a family of

I just switched horses because I need to stop and explain something. I stopped writing up there ^^ and started writing below.

I just had one of those moments when the loss of your mate hits you right in the heart and lingers there, squeezing and digging in it's nails as hard as it can.

Mike liked happy movies. I do, too. We enjoyed them so much that when it was bedtime in our room, we would often have one of the movies playing. I can't even begin to tell you the significance of the movie Kung Fu Panda (and Kung Fu Panda II but especially the first) but I can tell you that certain movies have a connection to them and one is...The Croods. Apparently. Because when I typed that title, my brain stopped short on a sweet memory of he and I. That memory was, that the last time I saw that movie he was with me, it was bedtime, no safer time, and I was covered. All angles of life. Things were loving and wonderful, and he was alive and strong and vibrant and here with me. Everything was fine.

I think I'm having a day.

I wanted to tell you something funny but I'm gonna have to come back for that.

No. I'm gonna stay with it. This is gonna look so melodramatic later. :/

So when The Croods came out, a movie about cave people and their cartoony trials and triumphs, there was a grandma character who didn't get along well with her son-in-law. As a result, every time the family would experience a potentially life-threatening moment of dangerous caveman existence, there would be a moment after the melee' during which the son-in-law would express hope that perhaps this time, the old crone died. That hope would then be immediately dashed by the "Still aliiiiive!", shouted from grandma's location. Mike took to saying that about my old dog, Abby, on those rare occasions she was out of eyesight and I'd call her and she would not come, because she is stone deaf. When she would appear, he'd sarcasticly say in the grandma voice, "Still aliiiiive!" and he'd be as bummed as the son-in-law.

Today I was watering my plants outside at dusk, just about 200 yards from the body of my husband lying buried in the church yard next door...when I remembered that whole scenario. And I said to him, aloud, "The dog, outlived YOU!" And I laughed about it. Hard.

And then I came here to write it and cried. Hard.

I sure do miss my obnoxious, jealous husband.

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