Blog Update! I announced I’m making this summer another #SummerOfYes earlier this month in my Spirit & The City column. Join in and share on social media what you are saying YES to this summer by using #SummerOfYes on Twitter, and joining us on Facebook and Google+.
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August 5, 2014
Greetings from my Summer of Yes. After interviewing personal coach Paul Boynton at the top of the year about his book, Begin With Yes, that simple notion stuck with me – say yes more often – even though I’m a fairly yes-based guy. My radio show‘s programming has been dedicated #SummerOfYes, as we’ve brought guests on who are themselves saying big yeses, or who might help you and I say yes more to life.
I knew consciously saying yes more would equal more, but I couldn’t have expected the spirited magic I experienced last month, that resonates still as I write.
I’m a dog lover. If you follow me on Twitter you know that my copper American Cocker Spaniel Ella, rescued from a shelter when she was six months old, five years ago, has me wrapped around her wooly paw. Before Ella there was Jack, and there was also Chip, the German Shepard who used to chase cars, Patchie, and Chimo (I still have the picture of Chimo and I snuggling when I was five years old amongst some birthday gifts).
In the mix of all these canines was also little Sammy. Sammy was a short-haired miniature Dachshund, velvet soft and ferociously loyal to her master. I met Sammy when I was in my very early twenties, dating a guy I had no business dating, but with whom I thought it would be an awesome idea to get a dog. The boyfriend soon became old news, but Sammy remained the main headline as the years unfolded. We looked so silly as we walked through life together, all six-foot-four of me next to a hopping, weiner-shaped, floppy-eared little girl, mere inches off the ground.
As jobs, boyfriends, homes, circumstances changed, Sammy was the constant. It was – as it is for dogs and their human friends – an affair to remember, lasting a rich sixteen years.
The day Sammy died I knew was the day she would die. She had been unwell, but on that morning when I woke and saw her, I knew. She was comfortable, but ill and fading, so I held her in my arms the whole day. Even when I had to go to the bathroom I didn’t let my touch leave her; it’s not easy peeing holding ten pounds close to your chest.
It was a few days before Christmas. Some friends came and went to say their goodbyes, and then, finally, at three in the morning in the darkness of my bedroom, as I sobbed, trying to keep my shaking body still, two fingers pressed softly on her little heart beat until it stopped, my lady friend who had been my constant companion all my adult life, made her quiet exit. I will never forget the feel of her fading heart to nothing.
I love my Ella, but Sammy was my first Best Girl.
As this Summer of Yes began, I found myself saying yes to camping – a pretty big no, typically – and so there I was in the back seat of my friends’ van last month, en route to our weekend in the woods, when I noticed we entered a place called Norfolk County. I couldn’t for the life of me recall why, but I knew I had been there before.
As I tried to remember I had the impulse to turn my head and look out the window. If I had not followed it, I would never have seen what I saw.
There was the house, there was the yard, there was the spot where I first met Sammy as a puppy. I could almost sense twenty years past, standing right there, our eyes connecting as she, the runt of the litter, was jostled and shoved about by her bigger siblings. Before the van completely passed the site, I also saw, like confirmation I wasn’t imagining things, a huge hand-painted sign: “Miniature Dachshunds for Sale.”
My heart fairly skipped a beat. I took a photograph with my mind of the scene, a freeze frame on which to linger as we drove, my friends in the front seat of the van oblivious to the delicious warm blast from the past I was having.
I almost forgot to breathe it felt so good, a deep well of Sammy memories gushing up through me. It felt like sweet joy, pure love.
Sammy’s energy has remained in my orbit ever since, like a reunion.
Summer of yes gave me a gift: I was handed the profound knowing, just from a turn of my head and a look out the window of a vehicle I would not normally have found myself in, that love is so far-reaching it transcends death. >Tweet this!
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- Related: Begin With Yes
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