Rocky's nose knows

Before Calli left to live in France for the next year, she asked me if I had ever seen Rocky “nose” the photo of Chip on the table just inside the living room. I was unclear what she meant, so she further described how she had seen Rocky walk over to the photo of Chip standing in front of the Grand Teton mountain when he was a camp counselor at Teton Valley Ranch Camp and nudge at the photo once with his nose. She said she saw him push his nose on the photo on 3 different occasions when she was getting his harness ready to take him on a walk. I told her I had never seen him do this, and we both expressed curiosity about why he would do it.

In mid-October, as I was laying in bed one quiet Saturday morning, Rocky nosed the 2” by 3” framed photo of Chip that sits on my bedside table amongst a pile of books, two framed photos of the children and my widow’s journal. I found the photo of Chip in a pile of papers and receipts a couple months after he died, when I was going through a box in a closet that we had never unpacked after moving into our home in April 2018. I immediately framed the photo. It’s a passport photo of Chip taken January 29, 2015 when we went together to get our passports renewed (his was expiring soon, mine had expired 5 or so years prior). While his picture was being taken in front of the white background, I was standing behind the CVS employee taking the photo. Chip was smiling directly at me when the shutter opened and fully exposed the camera sensor to the light that passed through the lens and onto his sweet face. The light captured him and the way he looked and smiled at me perfectly. When Rocky pushed on the photo of Chip on my nightstand with his nose, I immediately began to cry and wonder if Chip’s spirit was somehow captured in that photo of him as well as the one in the living room.

This morning, while I was lazing in bed, Rocky came over to let me know it was time to get up, have breakfast and go outside. He turned sideways, nosed the picture once, and then turned back to nose at my arm perched on the edge of the bed. Once again, I cried and wondered why. When I couldn’t come up with a set answer in my own head, I called Calli.

I cried to her about it and she listened. When I asked why she thought Rocky only nosed pictures of Chip (other than his toys, balls or us in order to tell use he wants attention or needs something), she thought maybe Rocky can see Chip around the house in the form of a spirit and recognizes him in the photo. She also said maybe Chip’s spirit exists in small form in photos of him and that Rocky senses it.

The talk of Chip’s spirit being bound into a photograph or in the airspace around me in our home made me think of a Christopher Poindexter poem I saw recently and posted on Facebook. It resonated so much with me since Poindexter writes of those who have passed on being reborn. I have always believed part of a passed loved one’s soul or spirit returns in the form of a life not yet born, but Poindexter and Rocky inform me that I can believe that a lost loved one’s spirit can enter into beings who are already alive as well as exist in inanimate objects like photographs or favorite places they used to sit or visit.

As Poindexter wonders in his poem if he had to leave this earth before another person, could he be “reborn inside the colors of someone else’s eyes” or into “the curl of your smile” now I, too, will go about my days asking similar questions as I interact with certain people or objects.