How and Why did these little stories get written?
For many years, I have entertained the thought of writing a book. However, it always remained just a wish, a dream, and after one or two attempts, it continued as a possibility—something to do one day.
Then, that day arrived: COVID-19
At the start of the pandemic, I divided our team at our vet clinic into two groups, ensuring that there would be no physical contact between them. This strategy aimed to keep the clinic open and functioning during those uncertain times.
For half the week, I worked in the clinic, attending to patients indoors while communicating with clients and their owners outside on the street. These were strange times, and we did our best. I believe the pandemic brought out the best in us.
The other half of the week, I spent isolated in an apartment attached to our home. For safety reasons, my wife and grandson were truly isolating in the main part of our home. I moved into an apartment next door because, in my analysis, I was a potential risk to their health. I was in contact with the outside world for at least part of the week. We would meet for meals outside. I would sit at one end of a table, and they would sit at the other, and my food would be slid along the table, a bit akin to a gunslinger sending a beer along a bartop in an old western movie.
On the first night of isolation, I gave deep thought to what may happen. I concluded that it was possible that, due to my age, I was at risk of succumbing to the respiratory malaise that had hit the world.
If I died, I thought that would be a shame for two reasons.
The obvious one was that I was dead, and the second?
The second reason was pure vanity: the need to be remembered. If I succumbed, which was a possibility, the children, now adults, and their children, our grandchildren, I reflected, would not truly know me. They knew me as a step-parent, a role I filled for many years, and as an adult. From the start of my journey, I did nothing to overshadow the children’s natural father or to affect their affection for him, and he and I have an ongoing respect for each other, and friendship.
I read somewhere that Christians of medieval times referred to Joseph as ‘nutritor Domini’ - the ‘nourisher of the Lord.’ I realise this sums up how I have seen my role as a parent and grandparent: as a nourisher of the young in my care. But there was more to me than just a parent and a “nourisher of the young.”
They did not know me as a young person before I came into their lives. So, I sat at my computer and began writing the first episode of Snippets of a Vet’s Life, and 250 episodes later, I am still writing.
I hope you will enjoy them as much as I have remembering and writing them.
Rod Graham