A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog

by Dean Koontz

I thought of what it would feel like to be returning to our house if Gerda had gone from it forever. And putting these memories on paper, the same dread inevitably settles over me. We have lived under one roof more than twice as long as we lived without each other before our wedding. The world never made sense until we were together, and I can’t see how it would make sense if I had to live without her. There are moments, more of them in recent years, when the world appears to be descending into a hundred kinds of madness, when the sane life we have made for each other is more precious because it seems ever more rare and quaint in this age of unbelief, discontent, and irrationality. Solipsism, the strange conviction that only one’s self is real, does not afflict me, but I can believe that if Gerda were to die before me, she might prove to be the last real thing, so that I and all the world around me would at once be colorless and without dimension.