Harry

What to do on the day after your family puts your 14-year-old dog to sleep:

Wake up, remember. Go buy yourself a bagel with lox. Smile. Think of how much he loved cream cheese. That's not original or anything. Think of how dearly similar we all are, how even the things we love the most are shared. Walk to Prospect Park, alone. Find a tree where the shade is good, where you can watch the light through the leaves. Take your book out, but put it down again. Watch the sky instead. Feel the grass on your bare legs, the way it itches. Harry used to dive face-first into the grass, push his scruffy face through the soil. The first time he saw fresh snow he did the same, and came up with a beard of pure white. This is the gift: the world is enough. And isn't it? This breeze and these trees and the sun on the arches of your feet? Harry wasn't unapologetic in his love. He held back. He wasn't your typical, undiscerning, slobbery love machine of a dog. He had the soul of an ornery old man under all that puppy energy. But one night, after your first semester away at college, he slept beside you on a small couch, let you hold him all night long. In the morning he struggled up and fell ungracefully off that couch and looked at you, all "What? What's the big deal?" And one day you walked him down the cliffs at Lighthouse Park and he leapt over the barnacled rocks like he was weightless, afraid of nothing, lapping at the salted pools, barking at the gulls, while you stood shin-deep in the ocean and tried to call him to you, a command he never followed, because who would? Who would stop running when there is so much life to see?

You were a good pup, my bunny. You loved and were loved. I wish I could have been there at the end.