Forgotten photos are a powerful memory of a friend who’s left me

By David McElroy · August 5, 2026

I still can’t get accustomed to taking midnight walks by myself.

For almost 10 years, Lucy was my constant companion for these meandering walks that let us explore our neighborhood and the downtown area of the suburb where I live.

When I’ve walked those streets for the last nine months, I’ve left the leash at home — and I left it at home tonight. I walk silently down streets where the loudest noises come from the crickets all around me. I hear no heavy panting. I hear no sound of a dog’s nails on the pavement. I see no eyes looking up to me as though to ask where we’re exploring next.

And it feels inconceivable that my friend Lucy is gone.

It’s not just me, though. Other people notice. About six weeks after Lucy died, a stranger who lives a few blocks away stopped me when I was walking earlier in the evening. I was taking a short walk along the route that Lucy had taken most often when I heard someone call out to me from a porch.

It was an older woman who I don’t know. She asked about my dog and I explained that I had lost Lucy six weeks before. She said she had been watching us walk for years and had missed us lately, so she feared something might be wrong.

Then she broke down and cried.

Right now, I’m stopped at a tiny bridge that was one of Lucy’s favorite spots to stop and rest along the way. As I type this on my iPhone, I almost expect her to be sitting on the concrete-block wall where I’ve photographed her so many times before.

But it’s just the crickets with me tonight.

I’m thinking right now about Lucy and our walks because of a couple of photos that I discovered last night. They weren’t really lost, but I had never looked at them closely, because I thought they had turned out to be too dark to use.

Most of the pictures I have of Lucy and me were taken with the selfie camera of my iPhone, so I didn’t really have any good pictures with a proper camera. So one night — about five years ago — I took my tripod and Sony A7IV out when we walked. I set it up and we had a little photo shoot.

When I got home and reviewed the pictures on my MacBook, they were far too dark and I didn’t think they would be usable. So I ignored those images and just figured I’d try again another night. But I never got around to doing that.

Late Tuesday night, I started wondering whether any of those images might be worth editing. Since I could never try again, I thought I’d take a look and see if I could make any of them look good enough to post.

There were two images that I could brighten enough without losing the details of the image. I worked with them quite a bit in Photoshop — and I discovered that I had two wonderful photos of her that had been buried and forgotten.

The photo above is one of those images. You can see the other one here.

I used to have a funny habit when I came home when I had left Lucy at the house. I still do this odd thing occasionally now, even though she’s not there to hear it.

When I walked through my front door, I almost always sang a ridiculous tune to Lucy. She always greeted me at the door — with her tail wagging hard against the door — and I would sing our own version of the first lines of the Scooby Do music.

I’d sing, “Lucy, Lucy Lou, how are you?” I had a couple of variations for the second line. It was ridiculous, but I liked to think she enjoyed it.

I’m back home after my walk now. When I came in the front door, I sang that ridiculous little song to her once more. I also talk to her on my walks sometimes, just as I used to do when she was with me.

These two photos I found last night — which are priceless to me now that I’ll never be able to make them again — have me thinking about her and wishing I could talk with her once more.

But there’s a part of me that has the ridiculous and irrational notion that she can still hear me anyway. I like to think that part of her will always be with me.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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