He was a good dog. He was special. He was my wife's little baby. I was in the bathtub fifteen years ago when I heard the fight. Our son, Forrest, came home with a young dog, Jeff. It got loud. It went on a while.Then it stopped all of a sudden, and the silence was pronounced. I later learned that Forrest sat the dog down, maybe so he could gesticulate more effectively as he argued his case. Jefferson, a six-month old Dachshund jumped up on the couch where my wife sat and made his way up into her lap. And that is pretty much where he stayed for the next dozen and three years. The argument was over. After a few moments of silence, she opened the bathroom door with a smile on her face and the tiny hound in her hands pulled tightly against her chest. No one had to tell me that we had a new dog, a new family member.
He really was a sweetie. It took a little time, but the cats eventually accepted him. He loved them and all cats with an affection I have never witnessed with a dog before. He loved all animals, but he was especially drawn to cats. Go figure. In fact, when he got older we developed a ritual. I would take him with me to the recycle bins on Saturday mornings. He ran loose while I dumped our stuff. Then we walked on the walking trail down n the river to get him and me some exercise. After that, it was time for a drive. He would hang his head out the window, and we drove the North Greenwood, sniffing the air, looking for cats. We knew where to search and always found some. His eyesight was already failing so they had to move before he could see them. When it all worked out and he saw a cat, he would whine like a little baby. It made him happy. I loved seeing him that way.
That was our Saturday ritual. On Fridays we had a different one. Since we went on a four-day schedule at school several years ago, he has liked to hang out with me while I drank coffee and studied after Penny went to work. Typically, I would have one to three cats, a hot mug of coffee, several books along with my Bible and Jeff on he bed. He loved it; so did I. He just wanted, always, to be close to someone he cared about, his family
Speaking of family, he loved the grandchildren and all you had to do was say, "The kids are coming," and he would hop off the couch and wait and whine at the front door. Although he understood a lot of English, he never got a handle on adverbs. So if you told him too early, you gave him a bad day. You could not call him off the door with the words "later" or "tomorrow." He looked for the now.
Over the years we have watched his transformation from a young dog to an old man, then a very old man. He slowly went blind, then deaf, then he had trouble walking. Trips to the vet became more frequent, more expensive, and more stressful. This time, Monday of the Thanksgiving Break, I knew was the last. Not that I am any expert on death. But after watching Mom pass, I saw all the same things in him. I wanted to keep him home and let him die with us. I hate that he passed in a cage at the vet's. But my wife wanted to give him ever chance of making it. I was too much of a coward to even state my position. So I took him on.
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| Jeff and I on a Friday morning. |
Jeff is one more in a long string of stressful losses. Loss has now become a major category in my thoughts. As an English teacher, I often use Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea in Composition II. My students write papers on the novella. One of the topics I always offer them is loss and restoration. The old Cuban fisherman loses the boy as his fishing partner, his reputation as a champion fisherman, hooks, lines, leaders, a knife, a boat oar, a tiller handle, and even the great fish he finally hooked after going eighty-four days without a catch. None of my students over the past fifteen years has ever chosen that topic to write on. After doing my last few funerals, I finally figured out why. They have not lived long enough for loss to be a major issue in their lives so as a writing topic, it is not something they easily identify with. By the time you get into your 60s, loss becomes a big deal, an old friend, or more accurately, a dreaded enemy. Over the past few years, I have lost both my parents, our holiday traditions, several animals, my childhood home, land in Carroll County, a church we pastored for twenty-two years, church members, friends, my swimming, and my running. The swimming and running have come back only to see the running go again. I have seen elderly people I pastored go through loss after loss until they had only two things left: their life and Jesus. Then they lost their life. Jesus has to be enough.
He is.
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| Jeff and I on one of our Saturday morning drives. |
Another thing about all these losses is when they occur. They happen at a time in life when we dislike loss the most. I always heard that old people don't like change. Now I understand it. I hate change, but it keeps coming at a faster and faster rate. And the changes are having more and more of an impact. Changes in our bodies, in our country, in our world, in our homes. They not only irritate us, but they hurt.
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| Jeff's final resting place. |
Deeply.
We had a trip planned with Andrea and Caitlin for Friday, so I picked his body up Saturday morning. Penny bought a metal box, and we placed his body in there and drove to Carroll County. Although it had rained recently, the ground was only soft for about six inches. I labored hard to dig his grave. We placed him at the head of our tombstone, covered him up, and had prayer. His body will lie by ours until that great resurrection day. That is some comfort to us.
Losing Jeff has been difficult for me, but devastating for my wife, Penny. He chose her from the beginning, and he was always hers. And I know this will not be the last loss she or I suffer. These kinds of blows makes you want to insulate yourself so you will never go through that again. But pain is the price we pay for love, and love is worth the price.
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