Lament for Nelly
Sadness at a festive time of the year seems to be especially harder to handle. Christmas Eve in this case. The date will be forever engrained in the brain. The chill of it. You can almost let yourself indulge in a Keatsesque type of ode. That is if you felt poetic.
On Christmas Day it was ‘Poetry Tuesday” for me as always. To grab a few moments to turn internal thoughts into words. Self indulgent? But of course. And so in the dark early hours of Christmas morning, instead of searching the depths of the clear night sky for Santa, I wrote my Lament for Nelly:
Run free sweet Nell
‘cross sands and fields
and far to distant hills.
You’ve tasted honey
and lain your weary bones
on plump soft pillows of foam.
Have fun young Nell
this was no place for the old
so take flight. Take fancy
the open road is yours now
while in our hearts and minds
here you’ll always be. Nelly.
Nelly died at 7.15 pm on Christmas Eve. It was a shock. Greyhounds should live to a good age, not suddenly have their heart come to an abrupt stop at 9 nearly 10 years of age. She’d been for some great road trips with us recently too: exploring new trails; gazing across unspoiled terrain, reflecting on lakes. Then homeward bound, watching the world pass by from her comfy back seat of the Honda with her best buddy Tilly. Possibly wondering why young Aksel got to sit up front.
We will never know why her heart stopped. Why she decided of her own accord to leave us this Christmas. But she went graciously like the lovely lady greyhound she was. Considerate to the end.
There is a big empty space in our home and in our hearts. But a new bright star in the sky this Christmas time. Nelly joins our sweet young Bentley who left us in May. They are up there with Ben, Boogie and Trevor, Yazmin and Molly.
Run free dear Nell.
