Moving on...

When I was a small child, my best friend lived right across the street. She had blonde curly hair. I don't remember her eye color, but I can "see" her in my mind. We played. Rode bikes. Ate boiled peanuts...how I miss boiled peanuts. Her mom's boiled peanuts were the best in the land! I think that I was four-years-old when she passed away. She had leukemia. Back then, that was a death sentence.
The reason that I think that I was four, is that I don't remember Theresa being around when I was in kindergarten. Before she passed away, she was hospitalized many, many times. She suffered so. I remember one time that we were riding bikes and she fell off of hers. She had cuts and scrapes all over. I can see myself running home to get her mother. A boy in high school carried her behind me as I ran. She had blood all over her body. Maybe it was hard to control bleeding when you had leukemia back then.
I am not trying to shock or be macabre. It was the way life was. The day that she died, my mother told me to get my brother and sister and come inside. I remember not knowing how to feel. I didn't know what to do. Then I remembered seeing someone react to death on one of my mother's soap operas. The actress repeated, "No. No it can't be true," several times. So I said that over and over again.
When I was in high school, I watched an episode of Room 222. One of the students died of leukemia. I burst into tears and literally couldn't stop crying for hours. That was the first time that I really dealt with Theresa's death. Whenever I hear of someone dying from leukemia, I get tears in my eyes. Sometimes I cry.
The last that I heard of her family is that they had moved away. A few years later, they had a baby girl. They named her after Theresa. I think that is sweet. Not that they wanted their daughter to become her namesake, but that they wanted her big sister to be remembered and honored.
I have been looking for a basset hound. I have been looking for one that looks like my Bessie. She didn't have breed standard long ears. They were lengthy, but not up to standard. I recently saw a deaf basset hound at a rescue. She is the one that I want, but I think that I am trying to get Bessie back. I want my girl back. I guess that I am trying to deal with her loss now, so that decades later it won't affect me. It is hard to live pain.
G brought home an Australian Cattle Dog, formerly known as a Blue or Red Tick Heeler. She is pretty. TOO ENERGETIC for me. I haven't opened my heart to her completely yet, but I know that I will. She is not good with our cats, so I am on the fence about this decision.
Yet, it is nice to have a dog in the house. If you are a dog person, you just can't stand the emptiness of a home without a faithful friend. Bessie was G's first dog. In a way it is cute that he had to get another dog first. He has become a dog person, but he doesn't spend time training her...that has fallen to me. It is therapy, I guess. She won't lay on Bessie's bed. She just lays her head on the edge. It is sweet. I get the feeling that my Bess is ever in her bed with us. Observing the goings on as always. Ever here. Ever near.