Attribution: Photo by Bill Stokes
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, considers himself fortunate to share living quarters with the keeper and Phyllis as the two of them fill their days with one project after another and try to participate in Vista West community living.
Phyllis, as a photo artist and computer acrobat, and the keeper as a writer who can’t stop, pause only on rare occasions to marvel at the unlikely circumstances that brought them together so late in life—Phyllis being in Sun City, Arizona, and the keeper out on the Mazomanie Wisconsin hilltop, both single and anticipating solitary old age.
It was Phyllis’s chance discovery of the keeper’s Kickass posts on Facebook and her impulse to contact him prior to visiting her Wisconsin family that kicked things off.
The keeper ended up kidnapping Phyllis in her own car, and while the end of the story has yet to be written it might go “and they lived happily ever after.”
Now the days of “ever after” speed by much too fast and they are made incredibly precious for how they are shared—with helping each other, exchanging memories and opinions, cooperating with creative projects, and with laughter and love.
And the takeaway message of course is that you are never too old for love and all that goes with it, and you never know where it might come from, especially if something as unpredictable as “Kickass” is involved.
Photo by Bill Stokes