Death often comes in trios. This week the rock world lost one of the Rolling Stones, Charlie Watts, at age 80. The world certainly knew of him if they were even casually exposed to the band’s compositions, such as the grammatically lacking classic “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” the darkly driven “Paint It Black” or “Start Me Up,” I was not of an age or state of mind to fully embrace rock culture in the Stones’ heyday, especially when it involved protest or anger-related subject matter, but the group will forever be known as an important part of music history, and without a drummer, it loses some of its heartbeat. It disappears–poof–like smoke on the wind.
Along with news of Watts’ death, a good friend lost a battle to give a dog a second chance at a stable home. She adopted him from a shelter who took him out of a bad situation, and he was obviously not in the best shape when he arrived in her home, though the shelter had worked with him to get him healthier. Initially his biggest long-term problems were recovering from what was diagnosed as Lyme disease, along with some psychological issues with boundaries and excessive guarding of things. The protection extended to my friend, and I was unable to sit next to her when I visited without feeling threatened. After getting neutered, he seemed to improve, and he even began to understand basic principles such as sitting when I approached (I showed him and it only took once).
This instinctual behavior was not his fault, as she didn’t teach this to him; it was a mental issue which needed to be replaced by a better sense of security; television’s Cesar Millan and Matt Beisner (of the series Dog: Impossible) deal with this all the time with pet owners. Unfortunately a weekend in which he inflicted a second and third biting incident proved to be the end, and the decision was made to have him put down. My poor friend was beside herself, as this is the third dog she has had since I’ve known her (she adopts older shelter dogs and aged-out puppy mill breeding fodder), and I know she wants a companion for longer-term. He will undergo a necropsy to possibly trace the cause of his issues, and it will probably be some time before she takes on another dog. It was so sudden, yet considering the processes she went through to help him, not totally unexpected. Sometimes things change that way–poof–in the blink of an eye.
The third death explains why I seem obsessed with the word poof all of a sudden. In the workplace we often get to know some people by their special qualities, and we learned that one of our most unique customers passed away last year. They had legally changed their name to Poof, and apparently ended their phone calls by using that phrase. The lack of phone calls could easily have been explained by the current state of our country and people traveling elsewhere to wait out the end of the situation, but we found out that this particular person had indeed left this life; the obituary detailed a good Christian life. Sometimes the good ones disappear with a poof and the hanging up of that last phone call.
The speed in which things change can be overwhelming at times. Of course we also have the horrors of the lives lost in a suicide bombing attack overseas in Kabul this past week, which are tragic in a more profound way, but here are three passings with stories as individual as they were.
Always remember that life ends in a poof, so the magic needs to happen before then.
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