Was I really this out of shape? My prolific smoking and drinking over the past two months had certainly not made me any healthier. It was probably just the late summer SoCal air, ripe with that dry smog and airborne pollen that I knew only too well, but until recently had forgotten. It's funny how nonchalantly run-of-the-milll the end can be sometimes; just me and Sage romping through the hills of Laguna Niguel on one of those dry, short of breath days. It's a little hard to breathe, so I breathe harder. Thank God Sage is here, pulling at that big-doggy pace just faster than my own so that the leash was taught and my feet step heavy as we hoe-hum our way up the skinny little dust-dirt trail through the dry brush to the top of the ridge.
Sage stops and i stop, and we're here at the top. There's nothing to the south but high shrubs and trees concealing Monster's secluded, quiet neighborhood. To the north, our eyes stretch clear across to the other ridge, with the entirety of Laguna and Dana Point and that beach-town Elysium before us. Sage has stopped rummaging through the thistle, like she always does. Looking north with me, sitting on her haunches with her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth, maybe she's finally found what she was sniffing for all this time. But she's probably just tired from the hike. I love her to death, the old hag. I'm not exactly wiggling my toes ready for more myself. Man, I'm out of shape. I inhale deep through my nose, puffing out my chest and feeling my diaphragm pull down. Still, when I try to swallow, nothing gets through. Ugh, I hate this asthma. My throat's closed up like an albacore's asshole. But with another deep breath through the nostrils, a cold dread creeps up and my writing hand begins to tingle and then loose feeling. But still, that breath won't come so I sit down in the hard dirt next to Sage. And my chest seizes, so I lay back and try to suck sweet breeze through my nose, and stretch my chest up and out for God's humble mercy. But my chest seizes again. And the fingers in my right hand clench deep into Sage's fuzzy chest as she stood over me with her head above mine, looking forward, out towards the treeline. It's a numbing reluctance, an abashed acceptance. But my body's still shaking for air and I feel the tears squeezing from the corner of my eyes, and maybe Sage noticed because her head snaps down to look at me now with that big, lovable-dopey face of hers, smiling that pant-happy dog smile that you can't help but smile happily back at. With that slobbery tongue and those dancing eyebrows and those big beautiful brown eyes, and then, that flash. That color rainbow of white light prismed. All-encompassing. Forever in a moment, and I see it all. Everyone I ever cared for, all of them. Everything I ever remembered with fondness, right up to Sage's fluffy face. And there it was again, before me and above me, and brighter and whiter. My eyes flow rivers now, but I can't stop smiling. It had been one immaculate sight to behold for this soul. Something to be eternally remembered and grateful for. And look, Sage can't take her eyes off ya, kid. My only regret is that I couldn't have loved her, and that she wasn't here with me now. And I wish I'd seen the northern lights, but that's life I guess, isn't it. What're ya gonna to do. "So this is the end then, girl?" I mouth it out, and there's no sound. That old gal heard me though, sure enough, because I see her smiling lips moving like all the ones I'd loved. "The end? Why no, m'dear. That was just the beginning."
