Marley & Me (Spoilers Included...)

It's not unheard of for me to cry in a movie. I'm a sucker for sweeping strings and a great musical score, and my emotions burst, enflame or snap on cue as if I was playing Kleenex in the vast orchestra of my friends and family. Heck, I even wept as a young teen when John Lithgow laid a big smack across Bigfoot's face to entice him to go back the wild in Harry and the Hendersons. So, yes, I'm a softy. Many would suggest that is one thing that wooed my wife in our courting. Maybe not, but it gives me something to ponder while I'm wiping and sniffing in the darkness of the movie theater.

SPOILER ALERT... YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Getting back to this dog movie, Marley and Me, the couple after acquiring the dog and having it a while decide to try for a baby. She gets pregnant, and they're excited about baby making 3 (or 4 if you count the 100-pound lab). 10 weeks into their pregnancy, they lose the baby. Had I known this, I may not have chosen to see this particular movie today. Not that I'm avoiding the issue, but I've been in the room when the technician can't find the baby's heartbeat, then leaves to find the doctor. Our experience was not very different from our movie dopplegangers, with the exception that the doctor and tech were very understanding in the movie. Also very real considering that my wife Kristi is turning 22 weeks into her second pregnancy.

They go home and the husband is talking, trying to console his numb wife. I was thinking to myself, "Shut up you dork, let her cry or think or just sit in the moment!" In the middle-to-late-second-half of this thought I astounded myself with another astute observation: I do this. I try to fill uncomfortable silence with my wife the same way... and did when we lost our little one. Wow... how incredible that this dog movie was recreating this scene from my life. Maybe I needed this reminder that sometimes we just need to let life happen... not over-analyze or Dr. Phil-it to death.

Later in the film, Old Yeller (I mean Marley) dies. But not from rabies, in a "We have to defend ourselves and put the dog out of his misery" kind of way, but in a "the dog is old and dying and won't ever get better" kind of way. I cried like a little girl. Because as much as I hate my 4 dogs sometimes, they are part of our whacked out little family right now. And I know that even when some of them are gone, at least one will stay with us until he's departed this life. So I'm guessing that he'll be around for a while... and our kids will get to know him and love him like this family did Marley. They will become attached like Kristi and I are attached. Now, when the day comes to find some of them homes because of our move, I'll cry. Maybe not long, but I will miss them. Juliet, our Aussie Shepherd, the high-strung ritalin needing dog; Boomer, our senior Chocolate Lab, who has decided that she is MY dog (or I'm HER human); Sydney, our Yellow Lab, who is stupid as our back porch that she's either sunning on or trying to eat; and Palmer, Sydney's puppy, who Kristi bottle-fed and treats as if he is our 9-month old human son... when it's time for these dogs to depart, either our care or this life, it will be emotional for us. So maybe this movie, while entertaining and boistrously cute and funny at times, did me some good today. It got me to thinking about life, and how it is lived. And sometimes how a big tongue in the face is the perfect ending to a horrible day. Because I know one thing... apart from my wife Kristi, my dogs love me. Not because of what they know I do for them, but because they just DO. How cool is that?