Birds and Dogs

Grief is like walking around in the dark through a backyard full of holes, dug randomly about. Sometimes you can’t take a step without falling into one, other times you can go for several days without a fall. As time passes you kind of get a mental map of where the holes are, you avoid them, stay upright and start to look around at the landscaping and enjoy the view again. Then, without warning, you step into another hole, one you hadn’t come across before. All the feelings of despair come back and it’s easy to lose hope.
I stepped into a hole recently after a period where I’d begun to think that maybe life might be turning a corner, with me in the backseat enjoying the view. Then one morning, a song came out of my speakers, my iPod randomly playing an old bootleg version of an unreleased Neil young and Crazy Horse song. Molly was such a huge part of my life and sometimes I just wake up on a summer morning, missing her so much.
So, I thought I’d do a tribute to Molly, my wife and Molly, my dog. Neil Young and Crazy Horse did some recording in the late 60’s and Neil wrote a beautiful song called ‘Birds’ and recorded it with Danny Whitten and Crazy Horse on acoustic guitar but chose to release a version with a piano a year later on ‘After the Gold Rush’.
So here it is, what I’m calling ‘Birds and Dogs’.