He gives and he takes away

For the past seven months of my life, I have been living with a dog named Lucky.  My family never intended to keep one or even live with one but Lucky happened to crawl into our backyard one day and my mother decided to keep him as a pet.  The closest to a pet we ever got was two turtles my sister bought at an Asian New Year festival more than a decade ago; we fed it and kept it safe but one day, the two turtle disappeared and our hypothesis was they crawled out of the small plastic clear container we put them in and they walked away.  But hey, that's not a verified generalization; for all I know, anything could have happened to them.  Someone could have grabbed those two reptiles and threw them in a nearby pond out of sheer anger or resentment or they could have been eaten my the neighbor's dog who used to visit my front yard now and then out of pure enjoyment and curiosity. My family will move soon to a new house and pets are not allowed to be on the vicinity of the neighborhood; so sadly, my mother has to give the dog away and we found it a home where he will have other pet companies as well.  My mom said Lucky showed signs of sadness lately but she might be speaking for herself since she felt in love with him for past few months; she used to be afraid while touching him but now, she held him and even kissed his forehead like she did with my two nephews when they were only infants.

As for me, I came to love that little brat as well; I love seeing him sleeping and searching for food on the floor of the kitchen.  I love giving him daily walks and holding him on the crux of my arms.  After I found out we had to let him go, I almost felt into tears; my attachment toward him was definitely more than I expected and my love for him is as great as the love for any human beings I have ever care for.  One lesson I got out of this experience is that things come and go in our lives and sometimes we just have to accept it.  My struggle to acknowledge and accept this fact has been on a rocky road; when I have an attachment to something, I cannot let it go; I hold onto it like a baby holding onto the milk bottle as if that is the only life line that is left.  Christianity teaches, "He [God] gives and he takes away"; life is like that: it takes away something when the time is up, no matter what is the time frame, and we have to move on with the future. Aging has taught me how to accept things for what it is at a quicker pace than when I was a kid, maybe it's part of growing up, maybe it's just how life supposed to be.