Being left behind

By Peter Bowden
Okay. I'm going to stop time. It's the only way to do this. So every time I make an entry, I am breaking several laws; the primary one having to do with some sort of science thing that I'm sure I learned in school, but thought then that how would I ever use it later on. It seems to me that time has to come to complete stop in order to collect the words and block out the other noise that pulls me forward.

So let's begin.

On my desk is a calendar page, one of those small, desk-type calendars filled with pages about dogs, Jack Russell's. It was a gift that I kept on my desk at work. One page stood out among the other 364. A brown and white JR is standing in a field with one of those sad expressions that only a dog can show. The caption reads "being left behind is the saddest feeling a dog can have."

It strikes me how this might be. And even though, they say, dogs have no sense of time so that whether you're gone for a minute or day, the celebration of the reunion is just as joyful, that feeling of loneliness or perhaps even a sense of emptiness must create a despair that few of us can comprehend.

I remember as a little boy, when we would load up in the station wagon and head off to wherever it was we were going, daddy had to stop the car several times as we drove away from the house and scold our dog, because that brown and white crazy dog was chasing after us. I wonder if that sense of loneliness or yearning to belong or "why was the family leaving without me" filled that dog with so much sadness that it couldn't help but chase after us. And then when we were out of sight, how long did that feeling stay? Or did it leave as soon as the next smell drifted across the yard or the next squirrel invaded the "perimeter" of the dog's watch?

How many times have we felt that same sense of emptiness when something leaves us behind and there is an ache so big that it feels as if the world is crushing us and there is no end to it. And then something distracts us and snaps us away to another place and new adventure.

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