The last day of winter
A few weeks after I wrote Never send to know last April, I started going into work about fifteen minutes earlier and I stopped seeing the elderly man and his dog in the mornings. I wasn’t sure how to interpret this, since neither man nor dog moved particularly quickly. Was I just too early to catch them? Did he change his routine because he only had one dog to walk? Did he lose his other dog as well? Some mysteries remain mysteries, and by late summer they never even crossed my mind any more.
This afternoon I got out of work earlier than usual. Driving home I saw the tri-color sheltie being walked by a man about my age. There was more spring in the dog’s step than I remembered, but it was, without a doubt, the sheltie I used to see with the old man last year. My mind has jumped to conclusions with little supporting evidence, and I can’t help but feel saddened.
How about this. The elderly gentleman is just fine but his son/grandson is visiting and offered to walk the dog or maybe the old fella had bingo today and asked someone else to walk the dog. I like those conclusions better.
In recent times I haven’t seen the elderly dog I mentioned in a comment to that post, either.
If lives are measured not by length but by how much they touch others, these four-footed creatures had rich ones.
I don’t think I would have been able to stop myself from stopping the car and asking about the elderly man. But I’m nosy like that.