REX AND THE CITY, PART XI: Our First Time Away from our New Dog

in which Ed and I take our first vacation without the dog, miss him terribly, realize neither of us can live without him, and end up getting...drumroll please...engaged!

Hello Dear Readers - Welcome to another installment of my old REX AND THE CITY series from the late, great Bark magazine. We’re now up to #11, and—if memory serves me—this installment appears as the last chapter of the book version of REX AND THE CITY. 

One of the things I like about getting older is that my memory is not as sharp. (This is also sometimes one of the things I dislike. But no matter….)

I laughed a lot when I re-read this particular essay. (And is it weird and/or egotistical to laugh at one’s own work? Or is it simply that we ourselves totally get our own senses of humor? I think it’s the latter….) I also wept when I reread this—remembering Wallace, remembering Ed, remembering my beloved New York City, remembering our kooky dogsitter, remembering our shit-ass but wonderful apartment on the Upper East Side, remembering France, remembering remembering Antibes (and what is nostalgia if not remembering a memory?) Mostly I wept because I remembered that feeling of buoyant joy and relief and hope I felt upon being asked to marry someone. I believed in that instant that all of the chronic and abject loneliness I’ve always felt in this human lifetime would magically disappear upon getting married. (Note to Reader: it did not). I still sometimes believe that—call it female conditioning, perhaps. But I also now know that loneliness is simply another state of mind that ebbs and flows. And I know that at an ultimate level the concept of alone-ness is not even true. These subtle understandings of impermanence helps make the suffering of yearning more bearable. And here I will add the aspiration: May all beings be free from the suffering of loneliness…. 

Getting back to the Rex essay: What totally opened up the floodgate of tears for me was to re-read that moment when Ed and I returned from our trip and reunited with Wallace, and how absolutely overjoyed he was to see us. All of you dog lovers out there know EXACTLY what I mean. The joy of reunion, as expressed uninhibitedly by a dog. And there it is. This joy is the antidote to loneliness. Dogs offer us a high-octane level of joy that pierces through all false perceptions of disconnection and blasts open our hearts. Experiencing joys like that is what I imagine entering the heavenly realms will feel like. The happiest reunion ever. 

And so I cried. I cried because, despite our best efforts, the marriage did not last. I cried because Wallace died the day after I had moved out of the apartment that Ed and I shared. I cried because Wallace’s death was, in so many ways, my own fault. One could say that I simply did not take good enough care of him to keep him alive. But there is more to that story, and I am getting far far ahead of things here. And even if it is not an Absolute Truth that Wallace’s death was my fault, I still need to say it. In order to make it both true and not true. And clear any energies that might be manifesting as moral injury. More on that later…

We have these moments of remembering and weepiness; we have these moments of tender nostalgia. And always, what rises to the surface after the deep, clean cleanse of tears is so much gratitude. I feel so much gratitude that I got to have a dog like Wallace in my life, with a then-husband like Ed, and that we got to live for a time in the Greatest City in the World, and that I managed to capture some of that greatness in my writing. (And note I am not trying to say that my writing is great….just that I managed to capture all of the wonder and glory that surrounded me back when I was trying to be someone.) And even though on the other side of every beginning awaits an ending, I will say that our stories came full circle. Mine, Ed’s, and Wallace’s—as individuals and as units. We completed our work together, in the time that we shared together.

This 11th installment of the REX AND THE CITY/REX IN THE CITY series—“Wish You Were Here” originally appeared in Bark magazine, Volume 25, early Winter 2003, Copyright © Lee Harrington (writing as Lee Forgotson). Illustrations copyright Bark and the credited artists. I have no affiliation or agreement with any advertisers shown—those are all old ads from the original print edition.