Oberon. One day, while Obie and I were innocently standing on the sidewalk waiting for a red light to turn green, an animal psychic slid up next to us and said “Every dog has a soul mission. This dog’s mission is to bring gentleness to his male master.”
Obie’s male master not only loved him more clearly, deeply, than he had loved anyone and as his emotional life had been rough, Oberon brought a new dimension of softness to his life on earth. On top of this, (and/or underneath) during Oberon’s time with us, we were homeless for eight of the years, and the two of them had lived in the car together. They were partners in sharing air and space for every one of those years.
As that particular journey progressed, the finish line kept moving beyond our reach. We had ‘Lucy and Etheled’ twenty-four/seven, blood sweat and tears, our cookies into Whole Foods, eleven stores! Where originally, our shared dream was screenplays and stories on the big screen, the bottom falling out from under us required us to instantly morph from ‘the dream’ to ‘survival’ and Francie’s Magic Cookies became the solution. It took two years for us to get into our first Whole Foods, jumping through hoops of commercial kitchens and health department requirements and bar codes and you name it (and on ZERO money!) and when we finally arrived, the cookies went gang busters. For four years we juggled and tight-rope walked , re-investing every penny into the cookies with no dimes left over and we thought we were almost home free and then Whole Foods stole them. We grew silent. We were weary and sad. Obie knew this. He felt our joy and positivity slipping. His heart began to fail.
Ten years ago today Obie’s elegant, furry, sumptuously soft loving body left this earth…and it catalyzed the next chapter. Obie’s male master fell apart/broke down and a comrade from his days of living in Europe reached out to him and flew him to a refuge. I stayed here and resurrected myself. Alone.
Almost every day I drive over to Marina del Rey and visit the spot where we sprinkled Obie’s ashes. He knew what he was doing in leaving, and for me the acknowledgement of this continues to be inspirational and worthy of grateful recognition.