Year 3 in the Mountains

Well it's been 3 years now since I moved from San Francisco to Nevada City with my husband. We never planned on living here permanently. It was just going to be a summer home. How did it happen? Well, my dog died... For my 50th birthday my husband brought me a surprise 10-week old American Eskimo. A gorgeous ball of cotton with dark brown eyes. I never wanted a dog and told him many times that I didn't but he did it anyway. He said that he felt "compelled" to do it. To make a long story short, I fell in love with "Ivan". I worked from home and he was my constant companion. I talked to him constantly. When I went from room to room, I would say "Let's go to the kitchen..." When I was eating, I'd say "Let's eat chicken..." He had an amazing vocabulary by the time he was three and was able to get toys from his basket by name. Ivan even found my dream house in San Francisco that we ended up buying. On our daily walks we'd often pass by this house that was just amazing. A little bit of Mendocino right in the heart of the City on top of a hill. Castro down one side and Noe Valley on the other. One day we were walking by and a realtor was putting a "for sale" sign by the curb. The front door was open and Ivan (who walked off leash) ran in. Oh, my God!, I thought. But as it turned out it was such a lucky thing because the owner was there and she and I hit it off and even though the offer we made was lower than an other, we got the house! For many years life was perfect. That's when we bought the house in Nevada City. The month after we bought the house, Ivan died. He had been sick for 2 years with cancer and we thought we had it licked but one night he just collapsed and that was that. It sounds weird but that was the worse emotional trauma I had ever had. He was pure love. There were no regrets, no guilt, no baggage in our relationship. Just love. The night he died my husband and I were devastated. We left for Mexico two days later and stayed for a month. When we came back, our wonderful house felt different. It felt like the joy had seeped out of it. It felt cold and dark inspite of the weather and all our windows. We started spending more and more time in Nevada City and came to the decision to sell the house in S.F.