This is one of the last pictures I took of my Tall Man. I really love it because it encompasses him completely. He's probably watching Unexplained Mysteries or American Pickers. I can't tell for sure, but I'm thinking it's probably Dinty Moore beef stew in the bowl, and if you look closely, you can see that Josie is hopeful and drooling like, well, like a hound dog. I still have that robe hanging in the closet and it still smells like him.
God, I miss him.
This is about a month and a half before he passed. We walked every day over at Cape County Park South on a little trail we found - a brail trail. It was a great place to let Josie off her leash. We clocked it - six times around was a mile. It was easy to pretend you were in the woods on that little trail. The conversations we had. The laughs we had. And the pure joy we had watching our coonhound running around with her nose glued to the ground, bah-roohing periodically when she discovered something spectacular like deer droppings or a really stinky pile of wet leaves. Sometimes she rolled in those piles.
I can't go back there.
God, I miss him.
He would have been 66 tomorrow. On Friday, March 21st will be done. Gone again for another year. And I'll be glad to see it go.
As always, thanks for reading.