Goodbye Keiko
It’s really late and in a few hours, I have to say goodbye to Keiko forever. I’m not even going to try to explain what that means to me. If you really need to know, one of the neighborhood girls asked me when it would stop hurting when she thought about her dog Squeaker (he passed away a few months ago).
I told her the truth. You get used to things and the past fades with time, but the pain never goes away completely. It’s not a matter living in the past, but understanding that once you lose something special and irreplaceable, all you can do is cherish the experience you had.
I’ve never believed in navigating the highway of life with one hand on the wheel, and Keiko’s full throttle attitude, her enthusiasm, and sense of fun made her popular with almost everyone. Despite being a very playful girl, she could be serious too. I’ve been in some pretty severe dogfights, but I will always be in awe of the raw power and focus she could summon when she thought we were in real danger. As Winston Churchill famously put it, what counts isn’t the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.
Anyway, I know nothing about videos, but here’s my first attempt ever to string together some pictures. The lyrics come from a different context, but if you ignore the first stanza, the message is surprisingly appropriate.