The beginning of my spiritual quest and interest in writing

      I have had a life-long interest in writing and, in fact, taught composition and creative writing to high school seniors for 16 years before moving to French. During my years as a high school teacher, I completed one book which is shelved for various reasons, and I have been published in a magazine and newspapers. Since my retirement, my desired focus is to write metaphysical/spiritual fiction and non-fiction which is geared to the adolescent reader. During my years of teaching, I noticed a hunger on the part of teens for something more spiritual than society is providing them, and my studies in Metaphysics and my own experiences are both conducive to helping to satisfy this hunger.

       My first experience with death began my spiritual quest.  Long ago, I had a puppy who was undoubtedly the ugliest thing on the planet. She had long, gangly legs with white boots, and her coat was a mottled brown with tan and white speckles. I don’t remember where we got her, but I named her Bootsie, and she and I became inseparable. I loved that dog.

      From day one, Bootsie never had difficulty finding trouble, or it found her, and my Dad was unforgiving. Many times we had to run and hide from his wrath when he discovered an overturned garbage can or holes dug in the yard. Maybe our bond was because I was such a loner as a child and felt out of sorts with everyone, or maybe we were just kindred spirits searching for love and acceptance. I’ll never know. I just know that I loved Bootsie more than anything else on the planet.

       The night Bootsie didn’t come home was one of the worst of my young life. I stayed awake all night talking to God, pleading with Him to bring her home to me, but He either wasn’t listening or just didn’t care about my ugly dog because I never saw her again. My Dad found her smashed on the road in front of our house and buried her before I could even say good-bye, and I can remember looking at the blood stains in the road and crying with such a broken heart that I thought the pain would never end. That night, I just lay on the couch sobbing and crying my eyes out.  My heart was breaking, but I hid it from everyone.

       The next day, I sat in front of Bootsie’s rough grave and just talked to her, crying, when I suddenly thought that, maybe, she wasn’t really dead after all. I grabbed a stick and began to dig frantically to unearth my friend and companion. After digging a couple of inches, though, something made me stop. I still don’t know what it was:  maybe the fear of seeing a lifeless body where my Bootsie had been, or the fear of Dad finding out what I had done, or maybe my Guardian Angel was sending messages to me to stop. I quit digging and, for some reason, felt my heart ache subside. I continued with my life, thinking about Bootsie often and where she was, and this was when I really began to think about life on the the other side.