David McElroy

William had always been a loner. Although he lived with half a dozen cats and several dogs, he mostly kept to himself. He seemed happiest when he was alone.

And then a little black kitten named Dagny came along.

I don’t know quite how it happened, much less why. By the time Dagny had been in the household long enough to be just another member of the family, I finally noticed that she was joining William when he went off to be alone.

He used to love sleeping in a laundry basket in the sun. Soon, she was sleeping in that laundry basket with him. She was joining him when he slept on the back of a sofa. And before long, if one of them was sleeping on the bed — or watching out of a nearby window, as they were doing in the photo above — they were almost always together.

As far as I can tell, cats and dogs don’t have the concept of romantic love, much less marriage. But these two shared an unexpected bond — and it seemed to make both of them very happy.

William and Dagny are both long gone now, but I found myself thinking tonight that the mystery of their bonding isn’t much different than the mystery of a man and a woman falling in love with one another.

Keep Reading

I hadn’t seen my neighbor Harvey for weeks, but that wasn’t unusual, especially for winter.

When the weather got warm each year, Harvey was outside all the time. He was cutting grass, trimming hedges, talking to everybody. But in the winter, I didn’t see him much, especially since he left for work at midnight and worked all night, sleeping during the day.

I found out a few minutes ago that Harvey died about a week ago.

The news of his death hit me hard. It was only a couple of months ago that my neighbor Cora died. I know other neighbors, too, but Cora — directly across the street — and Harvey — two doors down — are the ones I’ve known best. Their deaths make the neighborhood feel very different.

At least Cora had lived a long life. She was a retired school teacher in her 70s. Until the last year of her life, she was active. She dated — and constantly told me about the men who were after her — and she traveled far and wide, visiting friends and her eight children.

But Harvey was younger than I am. That makes his death more uncomfortable for me. His loss is a reminder that death can come at any time. Even for me.

Keep Reading

I knew Laura had a 6-year-old daughter, but I didn’t know the details. At dinner tonight, she told me her story.

“I never had any emotional connection with her father,” she said. “He’s a decent man and he tries to be in her life, but there was never any feeling between us. I was always just desperate for attention from a man — so I kept getting it however I could.”

Laura is 28 now. She’s a strikingly attractive blue-eyed blonde with a successful career in management. But she admitted to me tonight that she has always tried to find something that was missing from her life.

“When I was little, my daddy told me that I was a mistake,” she said. “I was an accident. They didn’t want me. My mom admitted it was true, but it mostly affected me with my dad, especially since he had another ‘accident’ a year after me with another woman. I craved his attention and couldn’t get enough to make me feel like I was loved. So when teen-age boys started wanting me, that was my way to feel loved. I kept looking for more and more — but I never found what I was looking for.”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my own pursuit of “more.” Laura’s ways of pursuing something more was different than my ways have been, but our motivations haven’t been so different — and this is more common in our society than any of us like to believe.

Keep Reading