A Year Without Sage

by Don
(San Diego)

1 October 2011...a full year has passed since I said goodbye to my little buddy Sage.

Don's Little Buddy Sage

We still have our other canine family member and she is healthy and happy and we love her dearly, but the loss of Sage remains an open wound. I still look at the place by the front room window where his bed sat and I feel a profound emptiness in my heart.

It is inexplicable to this old soldier. I have lost family and friends, brother warriors and other 4-legged family, but never was the loss felt so deeply as it was for this little 12-pound blind Lhasa Apso, this tiny character whom I called my little man, my little bear, my buddy, my Sage. No other being was ever filled with so much love and devotion as this little soul, and none ever touched me as deeply.

I am not a believer, but were I to embrace some sort of faith, it would have to be one where the story of the Rainbow Bridge was a true one....because not even an afterlife paradise would hold any attraction to me unless Sage was there waiting to greet me, whole and healthy and happy. Now that would be Heaven.