“Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.” —Philip Larkin We lost Aela on a Saturday, mid-morning, four weeks ago. One minute she was running along the path we have walked a thousand times and the next she was gone. She was a puppy, four years old, and her last minutes on this planet—at least the ones before drowning—were spent leaping for a grouse she would never catch. Or not. Because we will never really know. She just vanished. When the clouds come down to to...
