May 21 almost passed me by this year. Work’s been super busy, which isn’t a bad thing. I enjoy what I do. I started a new job back in January. I write copy. Scripts. Get to brainstorm with creative folks who excel at what they do. Create interesting work in all types of formats — audio, video, print, web — with people who are mostly laid back personality-wise.
But then, last night around 7 PM, I realized what tomorrow was. What today is now: May 21. The double meaning of a single day in May. A double meaning that’s existed in my life for the past 16 years.
The day my dad died in 2009 and the day my dog was born exactly one year earlier. Now, her first birthday.
I’d received a phone call in the early morning hours from my sister. I knew what it meant. A few hours and a couple hundred miles later, our family’s life was split in two. For my mom, my sister, me. My dad’s parents. His sister. His brothers.
There was the person you were before.
Then the person you become after.
Even for my wife, who was then my fiancee. We married less than a month after my dad passed. When I’d proposed that January, he didn’t yet know he was sick. A few months later, he was gone.
An aggressive form of acute leukemia.
My uncle Rodney stood in the place where my dad was to stand on my wedding day. Where my dad would’ve been in our wedding photos is his brother — his perfect match for a bone marrow transplant that was never scheduled.
The sand in the hourglass — spent.
Coincidentally, the day after my wedding was Father’s Day. I was in Savannah, Georgia, with my wife on our honeymoon. It was hot as all get out. Muggy as s–t.
“Stunk too,” my wife said when I read this last line to her. To anyone from Savannah, don’t take this personally. It was the paper mills and factories. We weren’t accustomed to the odor.
We still had fun though.
We stayed in a supposedly haunted house on E Broughton St. Considering the sounds we heard at night, I’m not sure “supposedly” is needed. Granted, it may have been the ghosts in the walls clamoring for the AC to be turned on.
I thought Virginia was humid. Savannah reaches another level of holy hell.
One day, months before his diagnosis, before he knew what was headed his way, my dad sent me an email. I was in a tough spot at the time. I was struggling to find a job. It was 2008.
He wrote something that has stuck with me ever since. I’ll paraphrase, although you can read the exact words from his letter on a post I shared back in 2014 titled, “May 21 Is My Dog’s Birthday, Not the Day My Dad Died.”
Be happy, he said. Life throws you many ups and downs, but it’s how you move through them and how you come out on the other side that matters.
He told me to take my dog for a walk to get perspective. Even if it’s raining, he said. Take the dog for a walk.
At the time, it felt like simple advice. After he passed, it felt like a lifeline. A constant reminder that he’d lowered the bridge between him, me, and my dog.
While May 21 is the day my dad died, it’s also the day my dog Motzie was born. She turned one year old the day he passed.
It’s strange how the universe aligns these things. How it decided her first birthday would fall on the day I lost my dad.
A curious overlap. Grief and joy, side by side. One of the worst days of my life and one of the best.
Motzie was with me for sixteen and a half years. She died this past November, the day after Thanksgiving. It was her time. Her body was tired. It hasn’t made missing her any easier.
And maybe that’s why today almost slipped past me unnoticed. She hasn’t been with us now for almost six months. No birthday walk planned for first thing in the morning as it has been for years. No giant bone awaiting her return.
I’ve long thought of this day not as the day my dad died, but as the day my dog was born. Anyone who’s a longtime reader of this blog has read those words many times before over the years.
My next door neighbor asked me recently if I thought I’d get another dog any time soon.
“No,” I said. “Probably not.”
But there’s no “probably” to it.
My heart isn’t ready for a new dog any time soon. I won’t say never. But I can’t, nor do I foresee it happening in the near or distant future. I don’t view it as replacing her as a pet. She was more than a pet to me. She was my bud. My friend.
Nowadays, I feel like my heart is safer interacting with my backyard wildlife. They’re wild so you can only get so close.
It wasn’t until I glanced at the calendar last night, in passing, that it hit me.
May 21.
The day my dad died.
The day my dog was born. The day she turned one back in 2009.
And now they’re both gone.
It’s odd how grief shifts over time. Softens around the edges. It doesn’t always scream or sob or whimper. Sometimes it just hums in the background.
Unlike my two children, who never got the chance to meet my dad, Motzie did. When my parents would come to visit, we’d take a walk on the Rivanna Trail or visit an apple orchard. Motzie always came along for the ride (and the walk… and the apples).
She was always there. Got me out of the house. Got me laughing again. Pulled me back into life when there were days I would’ve gladly stayed curled up in sadness.
So I guess I didn’t really forget about today or her or my dad. Not completely. My body still knew. My heart was still aware. Paused when I saw the date.
And maybe the pause is the best way to honor them both.
To honor the double meaning of the day.
I thought that double meaning would stop after she passed in November.
But it didn’t.
It’ll always exist for as long as I’m here.