Goodbye, Lucy. You were never less than loved

I went to the park Friday to visit a just-departed friend. The sun shone high in the brittle winter sky. A few inches of snow lay underfoot. It was her kind of day.

I called her Big Dog and Monkey and mostly, Monk. The Monk. Her given name was Lucy. Lucy was kind and knowing and joyous and just smart enough, but she didn’t have the luck of growing old. She got there right away. A deer tick bit her when she was 8 and for nearly the next four years, on and off, she suffered from the poison that eventually made her body an arthritic tomb.

She bore the humiliation of falling for no reason. She found the courage she needed simply to rise up from the slick hardwood floor. When Lucy became too pained to pee outside, she suffered the humiliation of relieving herself where she lay. She handled it all with an instructive grace. …Click here to read full story

Source: Cincinnati.com