A Well-Lived Life and a Squirrel's Best Friend

The passing of a loved one is never an easy ordeal to bear. No matter the now-touted "celebration" of a life well-lived, there remains a deep longing, a hole in one's heart which can never be filled.

And while many "happy memories" remain, it still is irrefutable that no more happy occasions will occur with the loved one who is gone.

It is a situation which is difficult at best to bear when others are experiencing the loss, and a situation which seems almost unbearable at times when it is yours personally to bear. There is at times little consolation in even the best-intentioned consoling efforts and only the memory of what the loved one would want somehow makes one's life still go on.

Such is the case especially when the loved one was one's father. But knowing also he would not want me to be morose even one day in my life, I will give him the tribute here of a life well-lived, a life well-loved and share one of the many happy memories left to me now.

In his later years, after decades of long hours and hard work, my father found time for many recreational pursuits. He had always loved nature and wildlife and a home in the mid-Atlantic mountains proved one of his greatest joys.

He had the patience of Job and one day began coaxing a squirrel closer and closer to him as he relaxed in his favorite patio chair. There was something inordinately kind and loving about my father which the squirrel apparently recognized before too long.

Within the space of a couple days, the squirrel was sitting in my father's lap, eating peanuts and other goodies from forks and spoons my father had obtained from my mother's meticulously kept kitchen.

Before long, the squirrel would be waiting at the glass patio door for my father each morning, then began the impatient tapping when he felt my father was taking "too long" to tend to his new favorite buddy.

My father reveled in this evolution of events, however my mother had misgivings (my father had jokingly mused aloud several times about letting his new little freind in to share their breakfast table) ~ but it was too late at that point as the squirrel had become one of my father's favorite companions and past-times.

As usually happens with "adopted" wildlife, there comes a time when their "wildness" gets the best of them. And their in-bred instincts and innate intelligence invaribly get them into one sort of trouble or another.

The trouble in this instance would ultimately be with my mother ~ however in the meantime, the squirrel was learning that the "goodies" my father had been hand-feeding him, in fact, came from several well-sealed containers in the garage.

The squirrel had begun accompanying my father around the house at times to retrieve more of these "goodies" for the squirrel's dining pleasaure.

Then one day, the squirrel decided it would be faster and easier to just by-pass my father's kindness and retreive the goodies himself. This, of course, was the beginning of the squirrel's undoing ~ and the beginning of the end of a beautiful relationship.

During the course of a day of yardwork, the garage door was left open and the squirrel wandered past the threshold and somehow managed to find a way to open one of the well-sealed containers ~ and well, simply put, made one heck of a mess.

The end of this close relationship ~ insisted upon by my mother ~ was not without its bittersweet moments (the chore of shoo-ing the pesky squirrel away subsequently fell to her more than to my father).

However it always brought a smile to my father's face and a subsequent laugh when recalling the too-smart squirrel with whom he had once been best friends.

My mother did not find it at all funny ~ even in the recollection ~ but then again that too was part of my father's great joy.

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