I search for her anew in each new litter of pups. She is present in my greatest joys and deepest sorrows, always a memory in my mind. And sometimes when the wind rises on an autumn day or when the air is full of promises of snow, sometimes then, I feel her near. In this moment, memory and senses in accord, reminiscences blend and time has no meaning.

The wind lingers in my presence, inviting me to share a secret, somewhere out of time. This young precocious breeze, just a whisper when we met before, has grown into a sturdy winter wind. She is with me, as real as the winter snow that blends with the tears upon my face. And it is only when I try to touch her, to make her linger yet awhile, that she dies all over again - a snowflake in my hand.

She is like a fragment of melody that I find myself humming unawares. Evasive and elusive, a song without words, a song with no end. While somewhere else, as I say goodbye again, as shadows of my shadow pass before me, somewhere else a husky leaps to the top of her kennel to greet the morning sun. Another stretches beyond her length and howls, harmonic with the world. My memory of her lives on forever in those she left behind.

Anonymous