Can a dog represent an entire era?  Walking down the halls of memory, he is behind every door.  In the corners of every reminisce.

The warm sun takes the chill out of the breeze as we sit around the freshly shoveled soil, soft and disheveled.  We are sitting on the cool ground fondling the green weeds coming up slightly through last year’s carpet of leaves.  Music is playing from Emily’s phone and Maryjane dances in place.  She attempts to shove handfuls of dirt in her mouth and laughs at the baby goat’s antics.  Andy sits against the large fallen tree trunk.  He smokes his cigarette, methodically remembering every event with Windsor.  I smile too.  When we picked him from the pet store, Andy barely three.  The small, white dog running about the front yard with the children, wild with youth, jumping over rocks.  Joining Emily on a sixteen mile walk to my Grandparent’s house.  A night I stayed up, eyes pried open, a baseball bat in hand, fearing for my life as my ex-husband got out of jail, a shaking, small dog that never left my side.  The year he won a pet costume contest as a vampire.  Picking him up from doggy daycare after vacations and finding that he was in front with the employees, always a favorite.  Wagging his tail when the chickens passed by.  Cuddling with the cats.  Emily meticulously paints the downed log.  In script writes Windsor’s name and dates.  The log sits in front of the newly dug soil.  Shyanne was working, but had given her good bye kisses the night before.  All the children gathered around the living room on an evening that was not a holiday to reminisce and cry.

From such youth, early twenties, a mother of a toddler and a newborn to sitting beneath this tree with my grandchild by my side.  Wisps of grey start to show and light wrinkles quietly descend upon me.  It is surreal to be here in this place.  Watching the clouds crawl across the sky I see my life, an era passed.  The children grown, my youth gone, my dog gone.  Time in front of me.  But the end of an era nonetheless.  Time traveling with a wonderful family dog.  Now, we look forward and see farm dogs (real ones), family dogs, but none shall replace the dog of the past era.  Windsor Wizzer Sanders, 12/15/95 to 3/3/2014.  Rest in Peace.