Sitting in the middle of the beauty and the pain

A story of love and loss

Lucky

We lost our beautiful gift Lucky.

When our daughter was a little toddler we started fostering dogs. Each foster dog bounded into our lives damaged in their own way.

When they left they wagged their tails with such force it knocked things over, ate with gusto and were ready to make an impact in someone’s life. We had to say goodbye. It hurt but we knew they had found their perfect fit. We helped the dogs find their forever homes and we had room in our lives to give the next dog a renewed sense of hope.

Our daughter barely able to talk, sat with her on the floor and rolled a ball over to her and said, “let’s play catch”.

Lucky gently picked the ball up with the wisdom that children can be unpredictable and rolled it back to her. My daughter squealed with joy and said, “that’s correct”.

Catching it all on camera we knew we had witnessed something special. It came to the time when the foster process says you look for a new family.

Lucky, you knew that it was already found. We were so lucky to have you Lucky.

Lucky was a senior, the type that generally take longer to find a home. When we foster failed her she had some grey.

Lucky’s grey was a mark of her wisdom. She had black markings that stayed over the years, despite the creeping grey on her muzzle.

The black markings curled up making her look like she had a permanent smile, which she did. Well most of the time, apart from when we had to go out to places where dogs weren’t welcome.

Lucky, you were gentle, generous with your love, loyal, food mad, loved the beach, danced with your front paws when happy and loved a good sun bake on the softness of the grass.

You put your head on our knees when you knew we were sad and nudged our hands with your nose so that we would pat you. You knew patting you made us smile and feel better.

We knew that one day this day would come and it would be too soon. It is always too soon when there is true love.

We sit in the space between beauty and pain. The beauty of having opened our hearts completely to such a gift. The pain of wishing you were still here.

Memories that make us laugh, cry and feel a heaviness of loss all at the same time and we try to make sense of it. The sense of it is love.

Thank you Lucky for trusting us to look after you. Thank you for gifting us with your love.

Most of all thank you Lucky for the lessons you taught us.

We now have the ability to sit in the middle of the beauty and the pain and be prepared to do it all again in the name of love.

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