To my friend in Pennsylvania with her life of trinkets, Christmas trees, holiday cookies, and yearly habits disrupted before they could grow into tradition: I wish I could move the world for you.

What an ugly culture where life without a bank account is no life at all.

That is American, however, and the land of opportunity's sparkle fades with empty pockets. Picking carefully through the grit sewn into the lines of a worried face we'll see our neighbors, mothers, husbands and wives, or friends who owe money to neighbors, mothers, husbands, wives, or even friends, and without it everything changes.

My friend must walk away from her home and memories and sense of safety, to one day find those things somewhere else. I have left, been kicked out of, or lost and found many places to live, but have never struggled to wrap the walls around three young girls and keep them pinned there -- a familiar surrounding, like a familiar face.

I see her rolling out cookie dough, washing her girls' faces, setting the table, and looking out the window as her husband comes home. She is also waiting for a notice in the mail to break this spell of comfort.

I wish I was with her to deal with life's everyday disappointments.

Like Lily, I wish that perseverance would just swallow bad luck, as it should.

Make different plans my friend, and look forward to them.

11:55 on a Monday night and I think again of Lily...

Through bare tree limbs jutting upward I can see Lake Zoar. Far away and across dips and hills is water throwing sunlight skyward.

My own path through fallen leaves. My own repeated footfalls zig-zagging around stones. My own daydreams.

Rather than crushed leaves and hints of stone I look not at the ground but inward for just a little while. My mind is cluttered with crumpled up ideas clogging doorways and blocking windows. My daydreams are having trouble pushing through. They are laughing children, barefoot and stumbling across spring grass, refusing to answer me. Yet.

I have not seen those kids up close in awhile. Where the hell are they?

Lily had me far into the woods on Sunday, where I lost sight of her bright orange vest streaking. Up a hillside, past a deerstand fortified with fresh lumber since the summer, across a stone-filled stream, and leveling off where I find what I had thought was a vernal pool, but the water has lasted far past spring.

It's a year-round splotch of moisture deep enough to outrank the puddles, but not ready to measure up as a pond. Trees sink their roots near its edges and fallen limbs and dead wood criss cross its surface.

Bandit and Hershey splash and I eventually wind my way homeward where I ask Jerry: has Lily come back?

Nope.

I go back out with Hershey and we roam. I follow my path again, knowing that at any second I'll see the points of her ears peek over the rise, and like spilling water Lily will follow.

Tonight as we celebrated my mother's birthday, I gave her an angel figurine holding a puppy. It's like my mom, who spent the past year caring for Lily when I was too worried to leave a sick dog alone.

December 26 will be one year with my German Shepherd. To tell this tale in Lily time makes the year a stretching, elastic thing that whips out in long strands or shrinks back to cheat days of their hours as Lily was sick, then better.

Almost Thanksgiving and we wait for a feast…

I know bombs are going off between North and South Korea and a tenuous barrier between war and no war is thinning, but I still have an oven, family, friends, and wine to put to good use this week.

While the Vatican worries about the morality behind a condom and the state of our souls if we pull out, I prefer to dwell on Merlot, side dishes, meat thermometers, and whether or not I like the Cabernet…

If Hershey does not stop growling at Lily I will shove the baster up her ass. Thank you.

My friend does not belong in caskets.

Thirty nine and gone after hitting his head.

On this late autumn night below a full moon draped in clouds Jerry took me on his motorcycle to see my friend Jerry P. Pictures of him smiling are haunting. I did not see him smile much in the last months. A few times a week he would reach for the bar's front door and I would try to have his Jack Daniel's poured and on a napkin before it swung shut behind him. While reaching for his drink, a hand would stop him. Fingers gripping his jacket, someone or other would say, Hey, Jerry, how are you…Someone always moved to greet him.

He needed a hospital, they tell me. He needed help.

I can ponder forever the things that should have happened. We all look backwards past our own long shadows late in the day and relive our lives better in retrospect, but death takes that chance and smashes it. Death holds open the satin lined casket and fluffs the pillow for us.

A rosary wrapped around knitted fingers where his hands sat clasped and cold. A suit. The license plate from his motorcycle. Stillness as we all stared in.

Until I saw a prone body in a box surrounded by gaudy bouquets and people crying, his death had just been a story I had heard. Somehow, once I saw this for myself, I finally believed that there was no mistake. Never before had I seen a friend of nearly 20 years knocked flat by death.

Too many times I have said that death is always a surprise, especially where no illness paved the path. Jerry P. was cut off mid-step, mid-sentence.

At the wake, standing there with my stupid fingers poking at my chin I looked at photos propped up for guests to see.

Lots of anger, and lots of confusion over this one. Too much time passed between his fall, and his death. What happened Jerry?

Have you pulled the strands of each little tie tethering you to us and drifted off? Your memories, knowledge, and last moments will remain yours alone.

Stories always follow death -- the last things to admit you're gone. We'll tell stories and remember and say goodbye.

At home I squeeze Lily's face in my palms. She had a couple of feet inside death's mouth, but we reached in there and yanked her out.

This death is neither something that happened for a reason, nor the Lord working in mysterious ways. We are stupid things that do not want our feelings hurt, so we make stuff up, and hurt anyway. Goodbye Jerry P.

Sipping a bitter whiskey for the first time, I lifted a tumbler of Jack Daniel's and said goodbye to my friend Jerry P.

It's what he always drank, so it's what we drank. Just a few of us passed that glass. Quiet. Hands reaching.

I am angry at the blackness I see when I look for his words. My mind is tumbling along, staring at the pictures instead.

I remember ...

On the day I fell in the forest and my ankle swelled, I later sat in Jerry's passenger seat with my leg propped up between us. We went to a friend's. A bunch of guys living together will inevitably make beer can art. Buds were stacked everywhere and I sat on a couch.

Years later I visited his apartment. Fresh, new, and small. He was studying music at a state university and I was a moron trying to open a beer. The tab flew off and seconds later I heard a ting. The aluminum piece had glanced off his beautiful, shining guitar propped on a corner stand.

He came to visit me at a cottage I shared with college friends in Long Island and slept on a spare mattress that we tossed between furniture in my bedroom.

He drove to Long Island again later that year to haul home a stupid old Dodge pick-up that I loved. Damn thing wasn't worth a second look, but I liked driving it. And for God's sake, why did I have to nod off and miss the turn for the Port Jefferson ferry? He was exhausted, and trying to drive me home. I think I slept on his bedroom floor at his mother's house once we got back.

Who loves you? he had asked over the phone, when he offered to come get the truck with his flatbed. Uncomfortable being backed into that corner with his questions, I asked instead, you'll really come?

His sister's wedding. At the last minute Jerry asked me to go with him. We dressed up and drank wildly. We were in the line of guests dancing through the room, winding between tables. We were later passed out as his mother drove us home.

My first tattoo. Jerry packed up his handgun and we drove to a guy he knew in Waterbury. He was with me when the ink soaked in.

High school and college ended. Life picked up and I saw him only sometimes.

Standing at the bar with a drink while my mother kicked and turned with the country music DJ, Jerry came in and surprised me. Sambuca! He had a few shots and a beer. Soon he was asking me to take a ride on the Harley. OK with me!

You sure that's a good idea, asked the bartender. Neither then nor now am I sure of anything. So what?

Jerry. What happened? I want to reach back to last week and undo events to save you.

For a big brown friend with ears rippling in the passenger seat, and a bark that struck like a hammer. For Deeke who looked good in his Halloween capes and hats, and could tell time by his stomach.

Once again, death is a surprise. Goodbye Deeke.

He left behind his sounds. Heavy feet and unclipped claws rasping along dry tiles. Deep barking. Clanking tags slapping as he flopped on his side to watch hundreds of footsteps tromp by every hour as we walked around him and worked around him. We stepped over him. We crouched down to scratch his head. We glanced down and said, hey Deeke, good boy!

He was an old guy, and we knew it. Then he was sick.

A couple weeks ago Deeke nosed up to my desk, looked at me with the please-throw-a-stick-for-me expression, and peed on the floor. I wish he had just written me a note or something, Kendra, I need to go out!

Last week he walked up to me again and dropped his head in my lap. In the middle of a conversation with the first selectman about vacant town property, I patted his head and he wagged and wagged.

Do dogs know when it's their time to go? I think they linger for us. They wait with the patience of a soul unblemished with guilt or regret, and watch us quietly until we can't handle their wasting and illness anymore.

Dogs can learn and adjust. They can express themselves and make noise or rip our furniture or stray clothes to shreds. And they can wait.

Animals must have an essence untethered by minds like ours -- stupid tweezers trying to grasp death. Their warmth and breath fade and mingle with the air. Alongside drifting woodsmoke or purling streams they blend, soak in, and change. Deeke is there. We are here. He will wait.

I remember...

As a kid rushing down sagging porch steps I would glimpse our dog as I raced for the bus. Gypsy would be curled up in the sun.

Screw school. I was seven years old and I wanted to stretch out beside my dog and sleep.

Rain.

It's a magic drumming against windows and rooftops, a noise constant and soothing that tells us to get inside beneath a blanket, curled up and warm.

Lily slips outside to find a tennis ball and returns with her fur pasted against her, drenched. Tail wagging and water spraying, she is happy.

I listen to the low hum of a million drops crashing and wonder where the water came from. Was it a pond or stream that let go as the sun coaxed steam into the sky, balling it up into a doughy cloud? Did wind drag it away? Did it hover as night sent us to bed and morning woke us, staring up at a falling sky.

I like the rain. I like my funny reflection everywhere I look. Suddenly a slick parking lot throws my face back at me from a mirror where once there was sand. Magic.