Lone Wolf, you are not alone.

Whether you believe in the Great Spirit, the kind of afterlife Deepak Chopra and Robert Lanza write of, or angels, or a Catholic community of saints, or just a circle of human friends still alive in this world, or some nebulous "Something Out There" that somehow cares - really, we are not alone.

Or so I keep telling myself. My inner German is full of Sturm und Drang, a sense of alone-ness that not even a dog can alleviate. And I have two Collies, the Lassie kind,. Yet even with them I don't "feel the love." The unconditional kind. The love that surpasses all my shortcomings.

I read the obituaries every day.

I feel for the people who toss money into memorials to lost loved ones. This one shows up all over:

Your life was a blessing,
your memory a treasure...
You are loved beyond words and
missed beyond measure.

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A hundred dollars to put that in the newspaper? "Ding, dong, the witch is dead" is how I often anticipate my epitaph, but I willed my body to science so there will be no granite slab over my dead body. I've threatened to become a poltergeist if anyone squanders money and real estate on a freaking wooden bed with a lid, six feet under.

Surely the dearly departed are not lurking in our hometown, reading the local newspaper over someone's slumped shoulders. Buy a keg of beer, summon some old friends to share memories, and pay tribute to the lost loved one that way. If you have friends. If beer is incentive enough to get them to travel to your door.

If my sister's soul lives on, she is surely dancing through the Cosmos. I never sense her presence, the way others say their lost loved ones "watch over." Julie, I would hope, is busy rocking in the clouds with Freddy Mercury, Harry Chapin, maybe Grandpa and Grandma too, although I never got the impression those two wanted to be joined for all eternity. One lifetime seemed too much. (I never saw Grandma shed a tear at anyone's funeral, not even my sister's. But I never took that to mean she was heartless. Just stoic. And a hundred percent German.) Grandma would scoff, but I keep reading [Libby McGugan](http://thebookplank.blogspot.com/2013/11/author-interview-with-libby-mcgugan.html), Scotland native, optimist, physician, author. She is at peace: Whatever vicissitudes we might face, we are all one, she says, and there isn't even a real difference between life and death. Or something like that. I keep trying to get it, to internalize it. The dogma I was indoctrinated with from infancy (eternal life in heaven) never took root in the tangled synapses of my mind.

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"... you have intercessors in heaven and on Earth who do know that the mind has many mountains and cliffs. Perhaps it is not always enough, but I know that the loneliness can be the worst part of depression. Knowing that I am indeed among friends in my suffering has been enough for me to keep going and to find hope.
--Michael J. Lichens, Black Dog Days: How to Deal with Depression

Gerard Manley Hopkins in the “Terrible Sonnets” lamented the silence of God in the face of his suffering. And he was a Jesuit. Mother Teresa (er, Saint Teresa, now) was afflicted with doubt and dark moods.

"The black dog is a metaphor for a melancholy,

a mild depression, an ill-understood angst that walks onto the scene for good reason, or sometimes, for no reason at all," Tod Worner writes. See Depression, the “Black Dog” and why it’s okay to feel ill at ease

Frisky was mostly black and very tolerant of wild little girls

"Black Dog"by Led Zeppelin with the memorable opening riff was the opening track on their fourth album (1971), released as a single in USA, with "Misty Mountain Hop" as the B-side.

Black Dog, you do not scare me. You actually, ironically, make me feel less... alone.

Tired of drifting at sea? The Isle of Write welcomes thee.

If you'd like to wash up on our shore, a click of the map brings you straight to our door!

art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics

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Pixabay images:
Wolf and Full Moon by mohamed_hassan
Day of the Dead skeletons by AmberAvalona
Collie: my dog, my photo :)
Frisky: Mom's photo of me (photo-bombed by #5 of 5 girls)
Summer scene: my neighbor's dog, Ted, R.I.P.