Sunday Confessional: lost and found

/ Tracy Abell

Today I took advantage of the last day of warm weather before the coming week of frigid temperatures and spent time outside cleaning flower beds. The last several years I’ve kinda been on a gardening strike and let things run wild. That laziness plus the neighbors’ enormous, beautiful pine trees that loom over our yard, distributing tons of boughs, needles, and pine cones, resulted in quite the mess.

In fact, as I excavated the debris I came across something I’d temporarily forgotten was there: our cat Lebowski‘s grave marker. I’d tried in vain to locate it in January when Zebu was here. Even though I knew where it was, I couldn’t find it beneath the layers of needles and cones. That saddened and made me feel a bit disloyal to my feline friend. So when my hand brushed against the slab of flagstone this afternoon, I experienced a moment of confusion followed by a flood of memories.

Lebowski was a wonderful cat.

The Dude in June of 2009

This photo is a bit misleading because he was an indoor cat although I let him outside with me now and again for supervised outings (and he spent his final months outside with me as much as possible). What isn’t misleading about this photo is that The Dude was a very large fellow.

I’m grateful to have located his grave again. Unfortunately, the words and dates we’d inscribed on the flagstone have worn away, but the marker is now in full sight and I intend to keep it that way. In honor of our magnificent Lebowski, temporarily lost and now found again.

15 thoughts on “Sunday Confessional: lost and found”

  6. Aw, I’m glad you found the marker. Someone already said the Dude abides, they’re lucky to have been the first. So I’ll just leave it at that.

    What kinds of things do you have in your garden beds? The Front Range seems like it would be a lot trickier place to garden compared to here, with the cold and snow, and whatnot. I like the sounds of big pine trees looming over, that sounds nice. We went down to Central Oregon last week for winter break and there were big Ponderosa Pines. I love pines. we ha ve a lot more firs than pines on our side of the Cascades

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    • The Dude does abide. Thank you for the kind words.

      The hardest part about gardening here is that we live on a shelf of rock so trees can be tricky. I have drought-tolerant flowers like iris, valerian, lamb’s ear, basket of gold, day lilies, lavender, purple coneflower, yarrow, sedum. Lebowski’s headstone is surrounded by phlox. And yes, the pine trees are magnificent. Glad you got to admire them during your winter break.

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