Life goes on

Have you ever taken a picture and immediately become overwhelmed with a sense of déjà vu ? It happened to me last night during a game of front yard football.

Watching the kids tackle Jeff, with Gus happily dancing around the heap as they wrestled for the ball, I couldn't help but think back about four months, to another football game that took place on the same turf in early May. The human players were all the same, but it was a different four-legged fan. 

Oh, Maggie, how we miss you! I'd included the above photo in a blog post titled Happy Days. I'd known at the time it was a moment to count my blessings. What I didn't know is in less than 10 short days Maggie would be gone.

And here we are now with a new player in training. 

Ready or not, life goes on.

Just as summer seems to have now passed, so have the most painful days without Maggie. There have probably even been a few days when I haven't thought of her at all - most likely because I've been too busy chasing Gus.

In last night's game, Jeff had Sydney in giggles with his silly play calls. Instead of yelling "hike" at the end of a play count, he'd use a rhyming word. And that's just too funny when you're four. "47...22...Bike! 33...16... Like!"

For most of the game it was the kids teamed up against Daddy, with Gus running interference for anything that moved.

Someone needs to teach Gus his job is to retrieve the ball, not the make-do goal post.

It seems almost trivial to be reflecting on Maggie during a week when some in our nation are asking whether it's time to end the annual September 11 commemorations and move on. But that debate, too, seems silly to me. Life goes on, whether we want it to or not. And that's a good thing. Because you never know when a new joy is out there, just waiting to be embraced.

At the same time, we should never forget those people, and events (and animals, too) who helped shape who we are and how we look at our world. 

I am again counting my blessings.