Growing old isn’t easy. Not that I consider myself old. I’ll soon be pushing fifty, but these days I think fifty may be the new thirty. Still, there’s some fleeting knee pain here, random wrist pain there. Mentally, there are the black holes that swallow words I’m searching for, leaving me to wonder whether I’m on a hormonal roller coaster toward menopause or I’m coasting toward dementia. But what might be even harder than growing old myself is watching Galen grow old. I didn’t have that opportunity with Gryffin. Sometimes I think that may have been for the better; sometimes I don’t.

Growing old is, in a sense, what Call My Name is all about. Posted on the fabulous blog, Full Grown People, it’s a beautiful, tug-at-your-heart, wipe-away-a-tear kind of essay about a Lab named Remi, the author, and the passage of time. (For those of you who can’t bear to read about dogs and death, no worries. I’m not giving anything away by telling you that Remi doesn’t die. Still, you might want to grab a tissue.)

I read Call My Name this morning and highly recommend it. You can read the essay here. I also re-read Father Time, a post I wrote after meeting Gryffin’s brother in Israel, an encounter that took place a couple of years after Gryffin passed. You can read that here.

Gryffin