Sorry, Nella

Schnauzers are the most contrary dogs you could imagine. They march to the beat of a drummer I don't think anyone else hears. They never walk on a leash in a straight line, they bark too much, they get in your face when they're angry, they're feisty and active, their fur is soft as the hair of a baby, and they'll love you half to death.

Nella is such a Schnauzer, black and small, but with a heart bigger than her size by far. Soon she'll be no longer with us. She has cancer and there's little hope past the next few days.

It's amazing how much a little dog, only eight years old, can grip your heart and hold it fast. How much of an ache there is already to know I won't have her giving me a good lecture when I come home from work (Schnauzers can talk - really). And I'm thinking that there's something else to this because I believe she's a creation of God, just like I am, only different. God's little creature, which makes her more significant than an accident of chance would be, more important to this world, this universe, because God made her.

I'm thinking that this world wouldn't be worth very much to me if I couldn't know that little lives transcend the grave. I can't be positive that there's an afterlife waiting for her too, but I think so. The mere significance of the fact that Jesus conquered death by rising himself puts every death on a different plane, not as doom and lostness, but as a remembrance that not all death is final.

Nella's had a good life, and I'm only sorry I didn't spend more time with her. I used to look into her eyes and imagine the world going on in there behind those shiny black beads. I wished I could have communicated with her how important she is in the larger picture of things.

I think she might have understood anyway.

ADDENDUM: Nella left this life at 6:30 pm July 26, 2005, while I held her in my arms. Rest in peace, little dog. Go with God.