I do hope you’ll bear with me. I am in a funk. Yesterday was pretty good, but today not so much.

Maybe it’s because I spent a good part of the day yesterday going through old iPhoto libraries looking for photos of Sam. Not only did I find plenty of Sammy photos, but photos of deceased dogs, my mom, and happy times at the cabin with all of them. Downright depressing.

Maybe it’s because the day after Sam died I had the patio doors open sitting in the sun room reading and I kept hearing what sounded like a cat meowing outside. I stood outside several times but could never pinpoint the sound. I think it might have been Aileen’s chickens next door making funny noises. Maybe not.

Maybe it’s because I keep catching things out of the corner of my eye that look like Sam in various places in the house. Logically, of course, I know this is impossible but my brain has yet to catch up.

He was just always there.

Maybe it’s because I can’t get the images of the last few hours of his life out of my mind. It was not easy to watch and equally hard being replayed in my head.

It’s a process and I know blogging about him will help. I’m just not quite there yet.

Photo above: My ming aralia plant casting its early morning shadow on the bamboo shade in the sun room.

Monarchs on Butterfly Bush, Skylands last week.

My heart is broken. We said good-bye to our big Sam today. He passed at home after a brave battle.

No other words tonight. Just sadness.

TruTails Sam I Am

12-09-2003 to 9-16-2012

Rest well, sweet Sammy. We love you.

No! Say it isn’t so! Remember I talked about Taylor Ham, Egg & Cheese breakfast sandwiches from Jessie’s? We won’t be eating these again anytime soon. Last night Jessie’s burned.

At 4:30 a.m this morning we were rudely awakened by lots of sirens. First one volunteer whistle blew, then another further away. Then a constant stream of police sirens. It was hard to tell where they were exactly, but in my sleep-fogged brain it didn’t seem like it was close. The sirens stopped, then started all over again. Kind of like the fireworks.

Once were got up news started to filter in through the neighbors and we learned is was Jessie’s Deli that had burned.

The road in to town is closed so if I want to go to town I have to make a huge detour. And I do have to go in to pick up new meds for Sam and a few other important things. Maybe I’ll wait and see if the road gets opened back up again.

Until then, neighbor Aileen allowed me to walk down their private road to the main road. What follows are from the scene this morning at around 8:30 a.m.

It’s my understanding that most of our local volunteer fire companies are away at a convention in Cape May (poor planning!) and they had to call in companies from further away. The main road below our house was pretty much paved with fire trucks.

One neighbor said that they went in to open up this morning and smelled smoke inside the Deli. When they opened the door to the kitchen, the fire erupted.

There are no fire hydrants so they were pumping water out of nearby Monksville Reservoir into tankers. When I was there the fire was basically out in main structure but the propane tanks were still burning.

My sister and her firefighter husband just missed all the excitement by one day!

How very sad. We’ll miss you Jessie’s!

(P.S. I forgot to say that Jessie’s is just over the hill from our house.)

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Update at 3:03 p.m.

NEWSFLASH!!! I sent the first photo to the local newspaper and I just heard back from them that they are going to use it in Sunday’s edition! Woohoo! We’ll see now if they really do! Follow this link to see my photo in the online version of the paper! Here’s the link.