Bruce Hubby died last week. He passed away the night before Bandit, two days before Boss. His son phoned me the morning he died, and I knew the call was coming, but could not help ease his pain more. The pain of loss ... of losing one's father, and one's dog, all at once... lifetime companions that can never be replaced, no matter how one tries.

Bandit was my mother's companion. He outlived her by eleven years. In the end, old age got him, when the rest of us thought he'd die of a broken heart within days of her passing.

Boss was Bruce's son's Great Dane. An animal he chose specifically because she wasn't expected to live longer than eight years. She lived for ten. I think that says something about

a: him
b: her
c: life with him was pretty good
d. life with her was pretty awesome
and more importantly

e. love thrives, no matter how you try to squash it.

Animals are so resilient and resourceful.

My cat, Minou, disappears every time the weather takes a turn for the worse. I'll call and call for her, but she has a hidey-hole she curls up in and doesn't leave until the green clouds of low-hanging tornado weather move on to more peaceful cumulous puffy-do's.

But Bruce was a human animal. He was the first postive father figure I had in my life. My father died shortly after I turned eleven. My mother went through a series of boyfriends after that, finally settling on one who had served time in the Army in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I was nearly fifteen then.

I met Bruce when my family moved from Louisiana to Colorado and I entered the same high school class as his only son. Bruce was always on the lookout for opportunity, but never at the expense of others. It seemed he was equally interested in doing as well for himself and his family as he was in his community prospering. To that end, Bruce found his love in real estate development (I spent all my high school years in a house he built), then as a pioneer in behavior psychology. He created PDP and saw it thrive throughout the rest of his years.

I suspect his son... my oldest friend, the first boy who presented to me the possibility of a stable life, a life without lunatics and drug addicts and people blinded and fueled by greed of one sort or another, a life full and yet absent of all crazy-making things.... I suspect he has buried his father this very weekend ... my heart is with him, for I know the long, lonely abyss he wades through at this time...

No matter the triumphs of one's life, until that moment happens, one always feels a child until their parent dies. I suppose, in a way, I maintained a sense of childhood so long as my life long friends had their parents alive and well to do the parent/child thing with -- even though both my parents departed this world long ago.

So... to Bruce Hubby... I say, Thanks, for providing me with a role model to hold all others to, for being a father figure even when you seemed apparently unaware of being held to such an example, even when you may have felt you were doing your level best just to maintain your own children. Most of all... thanks for giving to me the gift of your one and only son, the boy to whom I have always compared all others.