tears, tears, and more tears

I cried at work again yesterday. It seems to have become a monthly occurrence. But this time it had nothing to do with work.

My parents had to put Caleb, our family dog, to sleep. My sister Emi went up to Newport to be with him before it happened and afterwards she called me at work to tell me about it. While my eyes turned to liquid in front of the computer screen (and in front of my 3 office mates, all of them very kind and understanding, by the way), Emi described the whole event--how much Caleb had changed over the last few weeks, how peaceful his death was, how beautiful the grave (my dad spent the whole morning digging it and finding rocks to cover it; my mother laid a flower down for each of us girls). They played soft music and my dad said a prayer.

That old bugger. I was a teenager when we got him.

Death. Old age. Loss. These are legitimate reasons for crying. And even if they weren't, who's really to say? Sometimes death doesn't make me cry when I think it should. Sometimes listening to a report on Marketplace makes me cry. Sometimes just breathing makes me cry.

These are all things that a split second later make me smile. So, who really is to say?

In any case, I've decided to let go. It doesn't make sense, so why try to make sense of it?

Caleb, that old bugger. I can still see him in the field: nudging the milkweeds with his nose, and catching the Japanese beetles in his teeth as they fall to the ground. I can still see him swimming clear to the other side of Salem Lake, chasing after those ducks (he never did catch them though, and nearly drowned trying). I can still see him--the little black maggot--running fast away as we called him to come inside.

That little bugger.