Pictures will follow soon but this is what I felt compelled to write tonight as we enter the new year.

It’s New Years Eve, December 31^st, 2013 and as arbitrary as it is, this is the kind of milepost that causes humans (or maybe just me) to look at the past and try to organize it in our minds so we can understand what all has happened.

For me the year began in California where I was essentially hiding from my pain.  Abner had died in late September of 2012 and two weeks later I found myself waking up from 6 hours of spinal surgery.  I had a piece of crap trailer that I had bought with high hopes of traveling all over North America accompanied by my best friend and companion. 

Dealing with recovery from the surgery was probably a blessing because for a while at least it took my mind off of how badly things were turning out for me.  But the physical aspects of recovery were relatively quick and by the beginning of December I was off to California to divert myself with a couple months surrounded by my old friends.  This worked well while it lasted and on New Years Day of 2013 I was busy and reasonably happy, all things considered.  The surgery I had feared had passed although my pain had not.  I was missing Abner’s companionship but being busy with so many people who were important to me allowed me to feel the loss less acutely.

Eventually though, I had to go home. . .back to my real life.   As short a month as February is, it was a long one for me.  Suddenly, after two months away, finding myself in a home that was as silent and still as any tomb could ever be, I had to come to grips with how big a piece of my life Abner had been, and believe me, this was a shock.  I had lost dogs before, and each time I thought there could be nothing worse, but actually losing Abner was worse, and eventually I figured out why.

When Arlo died I was buried in a struggling architectural practice (1992 was a bad year for architects), had decided with my usual flawless timing to build a house for myself just when my business (and the income it had been producing) vanished almost completely, and soon after was dealing with serious health issues as well as the return of what would be fatal cancer to my friend Bernice.  Then in early 1993 my father was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer (he is quite healthy today, 21 years later) just as business was starting to come back.  In short, there were so many other things going on in my life, as well as having a couple decades worth of close friends all around me with whom I had entered adulthood, that painful though the loss of Arlo was, I did get past it.

In 2002 when Harvey died the opposite conditions were present, business wise.  I was as buried in work as I had ever been, was working hard on Design Review, and had another decade’s worth of relationships surrounding my daily life, so while the pain was intense and the house was frighteningly empty, there was a lot for me to focus on.  Jonathan and Dan jolted me out of my introspective grief by taking me climbing outdoors for the first time, and in relatively short order, I decided to get another dog, which was how Abner came into my life in October of 2002.

What was different when he died was everything.  I found myself living in Asheville, where I had come just under 8 years before.  Since I retired before moving here I had no work issues (too much, or to little) to distract me and everyone I knew here knew me as half of a couple, albeit an unconventional one.  Abner and I had spent almost every waking moment together the whole time we were living here.  Most of the people I knew I had met because I was always accompanied by this extraordinary dog, and most of the activities that brought me joy involved him.  February made me start to recognize that there was very little left.  It was a hard month although I had begun the process of weaning myself from the medications that I had been on for almost a year to control my pain so I had that one glimmer of hope that things were improving.

In March I made a trip to Massachusetts to visit Nicole Blum and her family, and on to Vermont to see my friend Rob Rives and his girlfriend Carolyn Loeb who was a few months into her apprenticeship year at Merck Forest and Farmland Center.  The trip was wonderful and diverting and once again allowed me some time away from the still oppressive silence of my home and the feeling of emptiness in my day to day life.

Shortly after my return from that trip I drove down to Florida and visited my friends Ann and Bowers at the beach for a bit less than a week and had a great time there as well.  Ann and I have been friends since 1974.  We have so much shared history it doesn’t seem to matter how much time has elapsed since we were together.  We are always able to start up like we had seen each other the previous week.

Spring then hit Asheville and I was happily inundated by a series of guest visits that started when I returned from Florida and continued until the crowd that arrived for my nephew Jonathon’s birthday all went home in June.  July came and went with little drama aside from my abysmal failure as a tomato grower, details of which readers of this blog already know.  In August I drove up to see Rob in Seneca Rocks, WV where he was teaching and guiding climbing for the season, and then went to Radford, VA to meet a couple of Pyrenees breeders who had been recommended to me as possible sources for a new pup.

This visit was a turning point because, as related earlier, I found myself surrounded by 14 of these glorious, beautiful, sweet-natured calm animals and was jolted into the realization that after almost a year without Abner, whether or not I was over his loss (or ever would be), the time had come to get a puppy and start a new relationship.  By the time I left Radford I was officially first in line for a male puppy from a litter Janet and Joan had planned to breed with a young female of theirs in September.

Soon after I found myself back in California for a couple weeks and then on to Denver for my nephew Ben’s wedding.  The trip went quite well aside from getting a crappy cold the day before I headed home.  Shortly after getting back though I started getting nervous waiting to hear from Janet about her pregnant Pyr mom.  Unfortunately it didn’t happen and I was without a plan to once again have a significant other upon whom to shower my affection.  It hadn’t occurred to me that every time dogs breed they don’t necessarily succeed in becoming pregnant.

Finding out that I could not transport a puppy from the breeders in Southern California from whom I had gotten Abner threw a wrench into plans to get a puppy from their kennel, and yet another breeding I had hoped to benefit from in Salem Oregon also failed to produce a pregnancy.

So now I find myself in the odd situation of having lived 15 months without the companionship of a dog.  That is, I believe, the longest I have gone since getting Arlo in early 1978 and it hasn’t been easy.  At this point there are probably a half dozen breeders all of whom know that I am anxiously looking for the right puppy so, no doubt, one of these days something will transpire and the pages of this blog will once again be filled with too many pictures of a big fluffy white dog.

I did survive the year, and have to admit that things are probably better than this time last year.  I don’t have my dog yet but I know that getting one is the right thing for me.  I am having nerve pain problems again but had an MRI yesterday so I will probably know soon what can or cannot be done about it and that is better than not knowing.  Besides, I am now on Medicare so even if I need more surgery, at least this time I won’t be hit so hard financially.

Late in 2012 someone bought my rolling turd of a trailer so I will never have to deal with that disaster again.  I am getting ready to travel to New Hampshire, Boston, New York, and Washington for almost two weeks (yeah, I know. . .no one does this in the dead of winter but who every claimed that I do things other people do?).  Then I will be home for a week before I head off for a week in Puerto Rico to hang out with my parents.  In mid-March my good friends Faye and Jay are coming for yet another visit and this time I am planning on showing them the area around Beaufort, SC and Savannah. 

I also have joined the Osher Lifetime Learning Institute at UNC Asheville where I having gotten into playing bridge with a bunch of other geezers twice a week, and believe it or not that is proving to be an entertaining pastime. 

The summary then is this.  There are still some pretty big things missing in my life and I certainly don’t know how my nerve pain will be resolved, but I go into 2014 in what I think is a better situation than the one in which I entered 2013.

I hope my friends who read this blog, as well as all the strangers who stumble upon it for reasons that remain a mystery to me, have a wonderful New Year filled with health and happiness.  And to my friends, all I can say is that the last couple of years have taught me to value you even more than I did before.

Happy New Year.