Forever

Do you ever feel you want to smack yourself to loosen up those rusty file cabinet drawers, and loose wired in your brain?

Just one wrong connection can either start a fire, or leave you in the dark.

It isn’t always a choice. Sometimes you’re just a mess, like me. Yeah, I get it.

At the same time you can be brilliant, detail oriented, creative, charming, successful, and even have people admire you.

Sigh.

I once asked my husband if he thought a Vampire could be a hot mess. He said no just a cold mess but it’s the same thing only worse. I guess I’ll settle for cold mess today. I’m a cold mess.

As I was cleaning out a catch-all room that would soon be my beautiful new office/studio I heard a scratching on the door, I thought it was my kitten Sterling, or maybe the old man cat Oscar. I knew it wasn’t my dog. When I turned around to look I saw one of the the most beautiful dogs I’d ever seen.

She was just lovely, all brown and white and black, with a long nose attached to the most beautiful face, and deep dark brown dog eyes. They were those kind of eyes that would make anyone fall in love with them.

“Where did you come from?” I had to ask. A do I’d never seen was standing in front of me in the upstairs portion of my home. Did I leave the back door and the side gate open? But when I reached to pet her my hand went all the way through her.

“You’re a ghost dog,” I said.

Then a more human voice answered. “Yes, she is a Ghost. Her name is Rascal, and she is my dog now.”

It was Nigel, the Ghost who not only haunts my home but my entire life. “She has been wandering around as a ghost since 1977. She finally needed a forever home, so I adopted her. My girl is part Australian Shepard, part Border Collie, part German Shepard, and a little tiny bit of a few other things. She is part of a lot of things but 100% mine now.”

“She didn’t go over the proverbial Rainbow Bridge?” I asked.

“No. She was passed around her entire life, and she ended up in a shelter. You know what shelters were like back then,” said Nigel.

Rascal was put down in a shelter because nobody claimed her or adopted her. Nigel later told me she was only five years old. She was a lively dog, living up to her name. She was also smart, which can be good or bad depending on who you end up with. I guess the same applies to people but that is a different blog post.

“I told her that I will keep her forever,” said Nigel. “and if by some chance we pass over to the other side we will pass over together.”

Tears formed in my old Vampire eyes as I stood looking at Nigel with his shaggy black hair, standing next to Rascal with her shaggy multi-colored fur.

My dog Alice, a 97 pound German Shepard, came up the stairs and wagged her tail. Then she went into my bedroom and curled up on the floor in front of my husband’s closet.

“Well, I wanted you to meet her, even though you are a Vampire I know you’re not totally and completely without a heart. You’ve taken good care of all of your animals. I despise you for being a Vampire, but I admire you for loving your animals and taking such good care of them.

Then in a whisper of blue and green smoke Nigel and his dog Rascal vanished.

I thought about how many ghost dogs and cats might still be out there looking for a forever homes. Some them are ghosts like Nigel, and some of them are just ghost, hoping that someone will see them and believe they are real.

~ Juliette aka Vampire Maman