Slightly Touched

There is a thin line between touching and touched. I think Dennis may be ever so slightly over that line sometimes. He asked Chris and I to accompany him while he buried his beloved pet Shelby. We made our way out into the Jefferson County woods in the middle of an all-day rain from the remnants of Hurricane Dennis. We carried with us two umbrellas, a shovel, and a small, makeshift coffin. It was, quite literally, a tropical rain forest on this particular evening. There was a gentle green haze hanging near the earth as we picked our way down to a flat-rock creek bed about half a mile into the wilderness. After navigating several healthy stands of poison ivy, we crossed the creek, and clambered up the sandstone bluff and bank on the opposite side. This was the spot Dennis had selected. This soil doesn't really facilitate actual digging per se, it is more accurate to call it "rock chopping" or "shovel destroying" - that is, of course, if you choose to classify it as soil at all. As we neared eight in the evening, the hole was finally large enough, and Shelby was laid to rest, finally. I couldn't help but wonder if the love of my life was completely freaking nuts while I stood deep in the woods in a the middle of a tropical depression watching him chip away at the hard ground completely uncovered with rainwater dripping down his face.