Good Bye, Bella

Bella, our sweet miniature Aussie taught us love, again. You can’t learn that lesson too often.

She came into our lives 14 months ago, after some unknown years east of Albuquerque, where we heard she had been a breeder dog.

No surprise there. Her stunning good looks, her gentle disposition, her amiable manner, must have been a treasure for the humans in her life in those early years.

It took months for us to feel that she felt at home with us. On walks she would halt on the sidewalk whenever someone appeared down the street or on a nearby driveway, and she’d stare with intense concentration, as if she was wondering, “Are you my lost family?”

She never quite got over her panic at every sudden sound. A fork laid casually onto a plate would send her running out of the room. But it softened, as grief also softens with time.

During those months with us, she grew to welcome us when we came into our bedroom or the living room, where she would be waiting. She had no tail, but her entire body would wag, her mouth open in a smile, her eyes, one blue and one brown, shining, two bright moons of welcome.

No wonder we followed the medical path when a mass was found in her colon: surgery to remove it; chemo infusions when a biopsy found cancer; a second round of treatment with pills when it was found that the cancer had spread. Until that didn’t work either.

Through it all–two months of treatment–she seemed to still love life. Unless she was a beautiful actor, sent to Earth to give us a path to follow, to teach us to be more aware of one another; to reteach us the art of caring and how care must be balanced with the art of letting go, of releasing one another into our private journeys into the unknown beyond.

Good bye, Bella dear. Thank you for coming into our lives, again, this time in the guise of a gentle soul dressed in a soft merle coat.