One of my very favorite authors is Dean Koontz. He spins deliciously wonderful and extremely well-written tales of plausible fantasy. He has sold over 400 million copies of his books. I also subscribe to his periodic newsletter, where he often shares his personal side about him and his wife Gerda who live in Southern California. It is no secret that they adore dogs and until she recently passed, his “Golden” Trixie was (and still is in their souls) their most important family member…embodying heartfelt and true unconditional love. In the stories he concocts, often one of his main characters is therefore a dog, even ones that can speak, and that very story-telling dynamic initially drew me to his writing. I was thus saddened when he announced in a newsletter that Trixie had died. A year before we had lost our own beloved “Ty”, a 17-year old Golden Lab and I had written an original song about losing a best friend. On a whim I sent a copy of the song to Dean and Gerda, hoping it might in some way ease their pain at losing Trixie. Amazingly, he wrote back to thank me and even sent along a copy of the new book he had just written all about Trixie, “a big little life – a memoir of a joyful Dog”…which I highly recommend to anyone who loves dogs. So what does all of this (besides dogs being full of love) have to do with “Love – Life’s Greatest Blessing”? It led me to another Koontz book – his 2013 “Innocence” with the following marvelous thoughts on love which I feel embody why love is indeed our greatest gift in life:
“But with one exception, all things pass from this world and time erases not just memories but entire civilizations, reducing everyone and every moment to dust. The only thing that survives is love, for it is an energy as enduring as light, which travels outward from its source toward the ever-expanding boundaries of the universe, the very energy of which all things were conceived and with which all things will be sustained in a world beyond this world of time and dust and forgetting”…and in my own “Paco words”, a world in which bundles of love such as Trixie live on throughout eternity. There is nothing greater than the positive energy force produced by love.
