This painting took 6 years to finish.
It all started with our dog walkers. They walked our three dogs during the week, and offered dog sitting services as well. One December, we hired them to take care of Sam, Elvis and Lollie while we traveled to Pennsylvania to attend our niece Regina’s wedding at Penn State.
The wedding was grand. The groom is a NATO pilot. His handsome, uniformed comrades formed a saber arch. Among them was my sister Carol. She was one of the first 50 women in the 82nd Airborne. A paratrooper for over 20 years, she looked quite respectable with her combat medals, ribbons, badges and what not on her class A uniform.
The reception party was beautiful and fun at the Nittany Lion in winter. While we were dancing and catching up with the family, my phone rang. It was my neighbor Sarah. She’d found Sam, our coonhound in her back yard. Several planks of our redwood fence where broken through.
As I was panicking about Elvis and Lollie, another neighbor, several streets away, called and asked me if I owned a dog named Elvis. Yes! This person was afraid of dogs, but Elvis is super friendly. The man checked Elvis’ tags. He is chipped and has a license and information tag on his collar with our contact information: address, phone numbers and emails. It’s already come in handy a couple of times, most notably when Elvis walked into a Christmas celebration and we got 6 emails from people there. He was pretty much the life of the party.
I asked the man to bring Elvis to Sarah’s house. Sarah called a few minutes later to inform us she had all 3 dogs. Sarah had yelled Lollie’s name in the darkness and she appeared.
Bob called his friend Dave Woodrow "Woody" in Mountain View for help. He rushed to Sarah’s house and collected our dogs and kept them until we returned two days later.
I was grateful for the rescue, so gave Sarah a bottle of wine. Elvis’ savior does not drink alcohol, so I mailed him a $100 Safeway gift card.
Woody used to be fierce skier, back in his adrenaline junky days. His license plate was “LUV 2 SKI”. I decided to paint him a couple of skiers shushing down a frosty slope. A few days after starting on the painting, his wife Nancy’s doctor found a large lump in her abdomen. It was an ovarian cyst and cancerous. It was removed, but had already metastasized. She went through a round of chemo. It did no good. A year later, two days after Nancy and Woody renewed their wedding vows of their 27 years marriage, she made Woody promise to be happy and died peacefully.
About a month later, Woody called Bob and told him he was having trouble getting out of his shower. He couldn’t move the left side of his body and thought it might be a sign of oncoming diabetes. Bob jumped in his car, believing it had to be a stroke, and sped to Woody’s house, calling an ambulance on the way. He showed up when the EMT’s did and Woody was brought to the emergency room. It was a stroke.
It’s been 4 years. Woody has been working hard to regain his motor control and has done well. Initially told he may never walk again, he does, although with a limp. He now consults with Stanford Stroke Center on how to accelerate recovery.
He got a Spyder, a three wheeled motorcycle, and joined a regional Spyder rider club. There, he met Angela. They fell in love and got married last year in a beautiful outdoor ceremony with the club, many friends, and Nancy’s family in attendance. The entire wedding procession of 48 Spyders and regular motorcycles, and a few cars rode through the scenic San Francisco peninsula to Gizdich Ranch for the reception and unbelievable pies.
He is happy again.
I pulled the unfinished painting out of the garage last week and just put on the finishing strokes. I can't give it to Woody any more. It's been too long and so much has happened. He's a new and different person. I told a friend from the Ohlone Cigar Lounge, Marie Garrett, that I wanted to give away a painting to a good cause. She had just the thing - silent auction for an Ohlone College fundraiser. It's a great cause and I'm happy to give it to them.
Update:
Dave died. He had 4 great years with his new wife before his body gave up. We happily took his 16 year old dog, Taz. She died after a few months with us. That's when the loss hit me. RIP Woody.
