"I sure am feeling sorry for the pony"

Rogers and Hammerstein in lyrically puzzling over the land wars between the Farmers and the Cowboys have characters attempt to present the opposition in a more appealing light ... one goes somethin like this for the Cowboy:

               The road he treads is difficult and stony.
               He drives for days on end
               With just a pony for a friend ...

When the roasting voice comes in ...

               I sure am feeling sorry for the pony.


My Pony? GuntherDog accompanies me through old age. He sleeps in an old overstuffed chair that once sat in M's parents' den where M's Dad tended his fish and read the paper ... watched hockey games and early television. Gunther tries to climb on the bed but a mere nod from his Mom, my Lady, M and he toddles dutifully from bed to chair. Lately, he's been slower at it.

Early AM, I get up, run to the bathroom for a moment and dress sufficiently to get GuntherDog downstairs to the door ... out to pee. Gunther has, for years, paused at the top landing.

              "I'm not goin' down stairs till you pet my head, Schmuck."

I don't know why he lacks the respect to call me Dad or Dear Ole Dad or Sir, if he must. So, I pet his head and tell him he's a Good Boy and doesn't have to call me Schmuck. Gunther relents and comes down for his AM toilette.

But I don't have it right and that saddens me. It's hard for me to accept that Gunther is my good Last Quarter "bud" .... that Gunther, as M pointed out to me, yesterday, chances are has some arthritis ... just like his loving Mom and Dad. When we treat someone even a little as an object, we forget that they're aging and suffer all the vagaries and vicissitudes of aging that we suffer. Whether we're idolizing them or depreciating them, when we stop treating our others as changing Souls, we're mercilessly objectifying them. Whether a friend who can't come out and play anymore ... a lover who ain't what s-he used to be ("many long years, ago," as the song goes) ... or a pooch whose gone through too many of the Snows of Killa-ma-mojo and now walks with a limp, pauses before jumping off a chair or is frightened to do that four-legs-flying run down the stairs .... whenever we forget that we're aging together .... whenever we do that we neglect the quintessential human-ness or poochiness of our beloved.

Aging is tough ... Moses goes out with a plea ... 'God! You've just begun with me ... Don't stop, now.' Jesus goes with his Eli, Eli, lamah Sabachtani (which either means my Lord! Why have you abandoned me or My Lord! Why do you slaughter me) and a quick 'forgive them.' Or Mohammad's plaint laying across Aisha's lap that his preference is for God and Eternity .... last decades, last moments, Last Quarters may well be the appropriate time for reconnecting with the Soulness of our others ... not their fixed objectivity but their evanescent and ever-changing subjectivity .... ah! for those of us already there, it's the only time.

• It's 600 AM, do you know where your dog is?
• Have you given him (or her) a hug, yet, today.

Woof! As it is not written in Isaiah 40: A bark calls out from the wilderness .... turn, ye, the way to me, Mom and Dad, you're all I got and I need my Kibble.

Be right there, Gunther!