DAY THREE August 20, 2016

Euchre is a tradition in my family, going back thirty years.  When I came home from college with this new (to us) game, Spades was out forever.  It moves fast, it encourages interaction and allows people to move in and out of the game quickly.  The day builds to an evening get-together that was not only a continued celebration of Kath’s birthday, but also an opportunity for my parents and my children to stop by and say goodbye to Flash.   

Lucy, our oldest, surprises us by coming in at around 3:30 pm.  Lucy is a lot like me, in that she thinks rationally but responds emotionally.  Kath can be a lot tougher in that regard.  If it’s the right thing to do, there’s little to be sad about in her mind.  But Lucy has arrived with a ‘gourmet’ dog treat she’d had made by a Detroit artisan.  It contains chicken and liver and other all-natural ingredients and, while I appreciate the sentiment, I wonder what ‘gourmet’ means to a creature that licks his own butt. 

I am pleased to see that I am completely wrong on this account.  Flash keeps this doggie burrito in his mouth, only the very last inch extending between his teeth.  He walks around the deck, as if wishing that we would leave so he could be alone with his treat.  We don’t honor his wishes, so he begins to move about the yard.

Initially, we assume he’s going to bury it, an idea that upsets us greatly.  I immediately think about the death row inmate from the Clinton era, a man with diminished capacity.  When he received a slice of blueberry pie, the final course of his last meal, he declined to eat it, telling his jailers as he was taken to his execution that he would ‘save it for later.’  We know there is no later for Flash, so after he’s disappeared from our view for a while, I go looking for disturbed earth and there isn’t any.  He’s gone as far as he can from our range of vision and eaten the whole damned thing.  I silently applaud him in my mind.

He receives warm greetings from my parents as the sun sets and the pizzas arrive.  Soon, Dan, our recently departed baby, pulls up and spends some time with the only family dog he remembers.  It touches me the way our children want to spend just a few more minutes with a charismatic canine that has become little more than a poop machine with bad breath, though perhaps that explains Donald Trump’s appeal.

We only manage one game of euchre, heavily larded with trash talk and false bravado, before we call it a night.  My Mom and Dad tear up a little bit as they stroke Flash’s ears one last time.   They know they probably won’t see him again and, like me, they’ve been through these late stages with a family pet before.  Even as I manage to hold it together, my heart breaks for them. 

The kids have decided that they will return before Flash’s final hour.  The logistics are up in the air, and both of them will be at work when the end comes.  I feel for them on that day.  I know how hard it is to be there when it happens.  I don’t have any concept of what it feels like to be at a remove.