Paul Benedetti - You Can Have a Dog When Im Dead: Essays on Life at an Angle

Copyright Paul Benedetti, 2017

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Benedetti, Paul, author

You can have a dog when Im dead : essays on life at an angle / Paul

Benedetti.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4597-3811-9 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3812-6 (PDF).-

ISBN 978-1-4597-3813-3 (EPUB)

I. Title. II. Title: You can have a dog when I am dead.

PS8603.E55627Y59 2017 C814.6 C2016-906904-4

C2016-906903-6

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J. Kirk Howard, President

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Like a lot of things in life, this book really began over a beer.

It was December 2007 when my pal Dave Estok invited me out for a drink. About a year earlier, Dave had returned to his hometown newspaper, The Hamilton Spectator , as its new editor-in-chief. Dave and I had spent years at the paper together in the early 1980s as young reporters, and had remained close friends ever since.

After our first beer and the usual catching up, Dave asked me if Id like to write for the paper again. I was teaching journalism full time and still freelancing. I had written some short personal essays sometimes funny, sometimes not for the Globe and Mail , a short-lived magazine called Ruby , and Canadian Living , and really enjoyed it. So I was interested but cautious.

What do you want me to write? I asked.

A column, he said.

About what? I asked.

Whatever you want, he said.

Whatever I want?

Yes, he said.

In journalism and organized crime, this is known as an offer you cant refuse.

I dont want to write about city politics, quirky characters, or serious issues of any kind, I said. You have people who do that better than me already.

I know, he said. Write about your life.

So I did.

I wrote about my wife, my kids, my parents, and my neighbours, about getting older, not much wiser but a bit fatter, about losing my keys and losing my mind. I wrote about birthdays and bar mitzvahs, about first babies and baptisms, and about weddings and wakes. I wrote about kids staying and then about them leaving, about wishing they would go and then missing them like crazy. I wrote about remembering, but more often forgetting everything from my anniversary to my wallet. And sometimes I wrote about dying, but more often I just wrote about living, about how I was bumbling through my own life, doing the best I could.

That usually meant making fun of myself and of life. But often it gave me the chance to stop and reflect on things a bit, too.

So, now when people ask me, What do you write about? I say, Nothing. And everything.

So thats what the essays in this book are about nothing and everything.

I hope you like it.

You may be wondering about the title: You Can Have a Dog When Im Dead . Its also about life, a reference to our ongoing discussion about getting a dog. My wife wants one; I dont. I think all good marriages are based on compromise.

Thats mine.

Paul Benedetti

September 2016