Today’s blog is a slightly modified reprint of my first piece in the Widow’s Voice, a publication of Soaring Spirits International, which appeared back in early 2021. Ever since then, I have been their Thursday guy and still am. A reprint follows.

Lately, however, I have been feeling the need to spread my wings beyond a target audience of grieving widows and widowers. Thus, welcome to Wiley Tout’s Early Line, where I plan to write about anything I damn well please, without regard to other folks’ feelings!  

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On July 2, 2020, cancer took my Beebs.

The photo of me and Lola the pup accompanying this piece was taken on the road in September 2020, on the day I picked her up from an Ohio breeder. There is a backstory, as follows:

I told my buddy, “You’re being a contrarian,” and abruptly ended our phone call. And he had been a contrarian, throwing cold water at my notion of getting a dog, thereby dousing the small excitement I had felt earlier that morning after my latest internet search culminated in a conversation with an Ohio breeder– one who had puppies available! Until then, I had not experienced excitement about the future since my wife died one month earlier.

Well, my buddy asks: “Why do you want a dog? You’ve never had a dog. You’re a cat person. A dog is too much responsibility. You can’t travel easily.  Plus, you’re too old.”

Maybe his comments were fair; certainly, they were logical. However, today they mostly stung and disappointed, and I admit I had reacted angrily, a quick, “I don’t want to talk anymore,” before disconnecting.

If I hadn’t, I might have reminded my buddy that he has four adult children, along with numerous grandkids. Unlike me, he still has his father, who, as my buddy likes to boast, remains physically vigorous and in full possession of his mental faculties at ninety. Also, my buddy is lucky to have enjoyed nearly fifty years together with the wonderful Donna. She still has her mother, too, of course, who turned ninety-five this year, bless her!

Donna has several adult siblings, and they have kids. Ditto for my buddy. You get the picture. My buddy isn’t lacking for company.

Given the circumstances, my buddy, who has raised German Shepherds for nearly as long as we’ve been friends, perhaps had felt justified in telling me he is through with dogs.

Meanwhile, my case is materially different. Lee and I had no kids, and my own family is tiny. In addition to everything else, an unprecedented pandemic has been raging now for nearly six months with no end in sight.

Even so, while she was alive we happily tripped through life, Lee’s shining lovelight to guide us. Suddenly, I feel lonely a lot of the time.

But here’s the thing: I still have many friends, including a fair number of the life-long variety, certainly, my buddy and the wonderful Donna included. My surviving family seems to like me.

I’m by nature optimistic and remain so even now. I’m self-confident, too. I feel physically vigorous for an old fart without, as far as I can recall, significant slippage of my mental gears.

I should be grateful and feel luckier than most, yet the calendar reminds me that I am about to turn seventy. I don’t think I’m either melodramatic or doomsday bleak in noting that my once bright future prospects perhaps have dimmed some with time. Inevitably, the past casts a lengthening shadow.

So, I am left alone to ponder life’s BIG QUESTIONS: Am I destined to die alone? Why shouldn’t I get a dog?