Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Won’t you make it shallow
So I can feel the rain
-Dave Matthews
By the time I ventured out of the house today, the mercury
was already most of the way up the tube.
The corner of the garden where Flash will rest needed to be dug out,
squared up. His antecedents had passed
so fast, their fates sealed so quickly, that I wound up digging last-minute
graves. I was also sixteen years younger
the last time I did it. I knew I
couldn’t let it happen again.
When it was deep enough to step in the hole, I climbed in
and took a moment to wipe the sweat from my brow. With just that turn of my head, I spied a
creature in the foliage behind the fence.
He jumped and I jumped. I’m not
sure which of us was more spooked.
It was my neighbor’s cat, a feline that answers to the name
‘Chicken’. He has not, to date, produced
an egg, nor is he a coward. To me, he
seems rather fearless, going after anything up to groundhog-size, but on this
occasion we were both surprised to see the other. I wondered if this was one of those weird,
sixth-sense moments with a cat, his piercing eyes somehow seeing into my
psyche, aware that I was readying a pit for a body. The flip-side would suggest that Chicken was
peering into the hole, musing over the size of the turd he could bury in the
very convenient opening.
I covered the completed grave with a tarp and showered off
the sweat and dirt. In a normal year,
anytime I dug four feet of dirt out of a hole would be the sum total of a
day. But that won’t be enough today, as
the children come back one more time to visit with their childhood
companion. I wonder if they remember the
holidays. I wonder if they remember the
day at the lake. I wonder if the day
will end with a tear or two and a gentle pat on Flash’s head, or if they may
suddenly lose it as a major part of their childhoods ceases to exist in a
sentient form. It’s beyond my control now. I am hoping for the best for all of us.
The family will assemble for a late meal tonight. We will cook a little extra bacon for Flash,
for tomorrow. Still, the celebration, if
we can call it that, goes on. I can hear
his jaws working the latest offering of bone meal into a life-sustaining
paste. Flash is ready to come outside
again. Dan Dickerson speaks of the
Tiger’s inevitable comeback from a run deficiency against the Angels, yet there
are many things we can’t overcome, foremost among them the passage of time. It is true for the Tigers. It is true for Flash. The Tigers lose.
Kath and I have done everything we can to make this moment
pass quickly. But moments don’t care
what we think. They exist in their own
time and evolve as they are supposed to.
A late evening feast promises moments that will unfold on their
own. We set the box of Kleenex beside
the dinner napkins.
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