People tend to lean on platitudes when they lose
someone they love. Being a writer
doesn’t change that impulse. I can’t
believe it’s been a year since we let Flash go.
I allowed myself to read the chapters I posted last August detailing the
experience of losing a family pet, through the prism of a home euthanasia. I appreciate those of you who took the time
to read them. Over a thousand of you
allowed me to pour my heart out on the page, and sharing it with readers was
somehow comforting. I was able to write
things I couldn’t say out loud.
First, you should know that I haven’t changed my mind
about whether or not it was necessary.
I’ve reflected on the decision I made many times and the answer always
comes back the same…it was his time.
Yet that doesn’t make it any easier. I’ve discovered that when you finally vacuum
up all of the hair…and it DOES take months, if you don’t have a staff…after
you’ve given away the toys and dishes and thrown away the beds…there are
landmines that you will casually trip over in a home movie or a photo album. It can be experienced as a sudden and violent
pain, or as a deep ache that feels like a solid mass in your chest, one that
will remain for a time. Faulkner said if
he had to choose between pain and nothing, he would choose pain. That may be true…but it doesn’t mean I
wouldn’t like to tell him to go Faulk himself.
There have been a lot of things happening in my life over
the last couple of years. My children
moved out and moved on, first to college and then beyond. My performing career has ended, as I can no
longer remember my lines (well, to be fair, I CAN remember my lines…I just
can’t remember where they go!). Talk of
retirement is no longer this vague abstract.
I’ve quit smoking since Flash passed, creating a possibility that I will
live to be an old man. And good God,
would Flash be pissed. In the middle of
winter he could be sure someone would go outside with him, as I was always
willing to puff down a coffin nail while he dallied in the yard, no matter the
temperature.
Kathy and I have developed hobbies and made a special
effort to get together with friends new and old. It is a peculiar feeling leaving the house in
the morning for an outing with an open-ended time for return.
No one is waiting for us.
It hits you at odd times, for me, usually coming home
from work. There was always an hour,
maybe an hour and a half, where Flash and I were a duo waiting for Kath to get
home, which kicked off the dinner hour.
I would talk to him just like I’m talking to you…just out loud. I know (and knew) he understood only a few of
the words I was saying while I prepared the dinner for the humans. But he hung on every syllable…standing
sentinel beside the cabinet that held the milk bones. Sometimes, when I was finished talking about ‘that
asshole’ at work, he seemed to even shake his head a little when he walked
away. Maybe he was simpatico…or maybe it
was just a housefly.
Now, when I turn my key in the back door, I hear only
the sigh of a screen door’s springs, divorced from the sound of tiny human feet
or even tinier paws. And that’s
okay. As times change, we will change
with them.
We don’t want another pet. Not right now. We are not putting all of our poker chips on
the square marked ‘Grandchildren’. Not right
now. Life is different, but life is, most definitely, good. I have learned over the last year that I have
a need to nurture and love. Kath has a
garden she likes to fuss after. I’ve
stepped up a bit helping out, but I’m not sure I have the green thumb. Still, it was a special thrill helping her
plant a tree back by our pet cemetery.
It was, of course, a dogwood.
My wife and I also have each other. Hand-in-hand, over the last twenty-six years,
we’ve been through so many things. The
quiet isn’t that tough. The echoes of
those we love, or loved, reverberate still.
We take comfort in the memories as we approach each tomorrow with open
hearts and open minds.
Sorry, but I’m back to the platitudes again. We are twelve months out. I haven’t lied to you yet and I won’t start
now. When I read the year-old posts today, I cried. It was a Flash flood. Not because he is gone, but because he
couldn’t stay as he was, before he got old.
He was a good dog. He was a
sweetie.
Flash is gone, but not forgotten. I think that's the way it should be.
