When you’ve pounded a few million keys and the life you love dictates that millions more lie ahead, every once in a while it’s necessary to take pause and immerse in distractions that re-frame what’s good and right and important.
I recently lost my writing partner. With her passing evaporated the urge to write. The blood evaporated from my fingertips. Cushla had co-authored eight books and five screenplays.
In between first drafts and final drafts she was my navigator; she sat upright (like a person) in my passenger seat and looked out the window at the passing of a 100,000 miles to nowhere and everywhere, through good times and bad. We had rescued Cushla from a shelter as a bowlegged pup who rode home in the arms of our daughter. She grew to 135 pounds and for nine years reconfigured life as we knew it. We put her down recently, slowed and then stopped by bone cancer. My wife and I sat on the floor on either side of her, petting her goodbye as her eyes finally closed. The time was right; but a devoted owner’s act of final mercy is never without its exacted price.
A life well lived requires a balance of love and pain and Cushla and I shared both, as owners and dogs often do. She blew out her ACL when she was three, zigging when a rabbit in the back yard zagged. My legs blew out a few years ago. After both surgeries I walked two miles a day on crutches all around her beloved state park so she wouldn’t miss her daily walk. We were a team, scarred but unbeaten.
Our greyhound Sadie misses her best friend and mopes around, a bit lost and eating very little. Sadie still loves to go for her long walk too but now the hour seems hollow. Cushla lived to blast through the creeks and streams, regardless of the thermometer. She’d stand in running water chest deep on freezing, single-digit mornings, icicles on her face and whiskers, the happiest dog on the planet. Sadie steps in the creeks only when she has to; and without Cushla egging her on she no longer does.
Cushla was half Great Pyrenees and half Saint Bernard, her sparking brown eyes the messenger of a thousand expressions. She slept a lot and snored like a drunk fat man, as large dogs tend to do. Whenever I sat in my office and wrote, she snored contentedly on the floor, never more than an arm’s length away. Hours on end, day after day, weeks, then months, then years calendaring by, she kept me happy as I wrote.
There is a hole now and I expect there always will be. This afternoon a representative of Big Dogs Huge Paws, a volunteer group that finds homes for displaced large breeds, is stopping by for an in-home inspection and interview. We hope to adopt Toby, a three-year-old white Great Pyrenees whose owner passed away six weeks ago. Toby is lost, too. Toby lost all he had, his master and his brother, who has already been adopted. Toby’s life has imploded; scared and confused, he has no one left to love.
I visited with Toby at a nearby dog day care center for forty minutes. We were left alone in a room and I sat on the floor nearby, hoping he’d relax. It was a tough go; his social skills are a bit lacking but who am I to judge? Mine aren’t always so hot, either.
All I wanted was a sign, however small, that his gap and mine might somehow bridge. After a fruitless half-hour I decided to look away and ignore him, as if I didn’t care what he thought. He nudged me and quickly looked away, as if he didn’t do it. A few minutes later I looked away again and he nudged me a second time. This was the sign I was hoping for. Time, I hope, will handle the rest.
I love my work and have been extraordinarily busy recently, going from San Francisco to New York to Denver to Dubai to San Francisco to Jacksonville, Florida. Life on the fly affords a merry-go-round of excuses why not to write, so I didn’t. But I did keep thinking, and between trading suitcases and forgetting things in hotel rooms and airports scattered near and far, I heard from several friends from around the world. Each reached out while facing his or her own unexpected challenge. Some are facing very difficult times.
I encouraged each to persevere.
“Push on,” I said, echoing the last words my late friend George Simmons told me the day before he was killed on the 9/11 plane skyjacked into the Pentagon. George was my mentor, as he was to a dozen others I respect and admire tremendously.
I think of that phrase often because George was right: Mortality is inconvenient and because of that we must push on. Push on to pursue our dreams. Push on to help make life better for others. Push on to honor those who give so much and ask so little, be they two-legged or four. Push on because pushing on is what creates the next great chapter in a rich and wonderful life.
Today I take my own advice: It’s time to push on.
And I can’t wait.