Mushroom at Sunset

What is "Life Worthy of Life"? Is Love Supposed to be Easy?

Mushroom is a sixteen-pound creature with fluffy formerly black-and-white — now grey-and-white — fur, who joined our household long ago, as what I called, ruefully at the time, “the divorce dog.”

Mushroom arrived when all was in flux, and his lively puppyhood provided a welcome distraction as our household was changing from having been a famil…