I looked at my calendar today and noticed an anniversary coming up next Tuesday. January 29, 1998 – ten years to the day Ranger died.
Ranger the Valiant Warrior, my German shepherd pal of 12 years and a bit. Puppy who slept on my bed, big bony boy who played fetch and tug and chase, magnificent friend whose companionship I wore like a second skin for more than a decade. He rode with me in my truck, went on hikes with me, waited avidly outside whatever building I was inside, left the house and came into town looking for me whenever I was away too long.
Ten years gone.
I’m over it. Sure. The misty eyes brought about by noticing that date on the calendar are just silly. I mean, who pines over a DOG??
But …
I was talking to a friend of mine a few weeks back, one of my multiply-married buddies who probably knows a lot more about relationships than I do. Pondering a question in my own life, something about love gone bad years back, I was seeking his input.
I understand how you can come to strongly dislike someone you once loved. But the dislike, it seems to me, is exactly equivalent to the earlier love … because it’s an effect of that love. You love someone, they betray you in some way, then you “hate” them. Because you still love them, but because you’re angry and frustrated that your love doesn’t have anywhere to go.
Underneath all the rage jilted lovers display is love. Still yearning in feelings for reciprocation, but determined in reason never to let that happen: “I’m not EVER going to let her (him) hurt me again.”
Pondering this, my question to my friend was “Does love ever really go away?”
He didn’t have a good answer. But I don’t think it does.
I mean, I know it can be taken from you – if someone actively chips away at your love little by little (and oh, boy, some people are good at that), there can come a time when there’s nothing much left of whatever it was you originally felt for them.
But barring that, I don’t think distance or time really have much of an effect on it.
When I look back on the short line of individuals – both people and pets – I’ve loved, I still feel the love. Even if only in small measure, it’s still wholly intact.
Some of those former loved ones are examples of love-gone-bad, people I’ll never see again because it pisses me off just to think of it. And some of them are gone. Dead.
But when I feel around inside myself, in both cases, the love is still there.
Saying it out loud sounds soppy, but internally, it seems as true as anything I know: Love doesn’t go away. If it’s real, it’s forever. (As forever, at least, as we’re capable of with our limited lifespans.)
Ten years later, I both love and miss my Ranger.
And I know I always will.