Old Friends
The first predated me. A living heirloom of sorts owned by my dad and I was born an intruder brought into a home he already lived in. His name was Rudy, a vivid pinpoint few among vague quarries of memory. I remember his name, his spotted grey torso, pink underbelly. Not much else. I was small, afraid. He was big and surly and I've been told since I didn't cared for him. But after his death I sit around the Sunday school huddle and I ask to pray, more than once, that he'd come back to life. The pause in the teacher's voice, her stuttered look. How to explain, how not to deny. I believed with a child's ignorance, the assumption that carried passed disappointment to realization. God can do anything but this won't happen. He is gone and he's not coming back.
A few blurred years pass before another literally walks into our lives, a homeless wanderer gone outside in. Fourth of July in a dark and crowded parking lot. The sky's green and red fire luminous in the river water. He is outlined by the spark sheen, his black woolen form hard to gauge in the night. He's big, maybe aggressive. Walking around aimless. He stinks, has no identification. So many cars parked and open with so many families to choose from and he lingers around us. He won't go away. Curiosity eventually becomes compassion and he comes back home with us looking jittery and from there he never leaves. What old parentage he had doesn't claim him and he endears to us a mystery never quite solved with his terrible ear infections and fear of the basement and rare Belgian breed. We call him Bear and to me he might as well have been. His brutish strength, fierce roar. A mouth that could rip flesh with dumb hatred and love with unconditional devotion. Two halves flipped like a coin so fast he's unaware of the difference. It's his nature, the purity of instinct. It powers his burly musculature after being run down by a stranger who drives away in fear and guilt never forgotten. He recovers strong as ever but it stays an early indicator toward fallibility, that the beast is not as great as his ferocity. So it was that the clutch of his life persisted as his body deteriorated and his legs gave out and the steroids no longer brought his old self out to run and play. When the day comes he isn't allowed the gift of submission. He writhes and chokes and his eyes bulge terrified as his heart is medically stopped. They administer no anesthetic to ease him and a grudge is kept against them still. I try now to see him as he wanted to be, galloping free across a field we often visited that seemed too pastoral to be real. Like a painting with the banks of the trees high above the grass and the cumulus plumage gigantic in the sky and the shaded waters to cool yourself in. He is center-framed in that acre, the land a little scrape of heaven imitated.
For twenty years she was there. Twenty, almost twenty-one. A gift given when I was four, almost five, by my half-sister whose hands were full. A spawned mix of small breeds that made a little blond thing like an animate toy. Her face bearing a triangular symmetry that was zealous to lade affection and uniquely fit for adoration. She arrives with a bed and a plaything that even then was torn from games and ratty with saliva. Samantha, a person's name. Born late October, rounded up to the holiday. She becomes ever present, as demanding as a fickle infant. Life involves itself in part with keeping her safe, coddled, satiated. Dedication evidenced by the peals of terror that accompanies her narrow dodge of an incoming car and the swift escapes made out the backdoor into neighborhoods lost and alone. And when she came back there were always outbursts of joy rarely experienced. So the years came and left. The scenery changes only once and she acclimates to the expanded space by running around the kitchen and the living room like a jackrabbit ecstatic every time we came back home. For each moment separated was an eternity for her. Each opened door a hysteric reunion. I get older, taller. She stays small, dwarfed. I go through schools, haircuts, shoes. I say goodbye to friends but never to her. Loss experienced mutually, painfully. But she remains. A constant when things rapidly shift, a simple exchange always kindled. The years stack exponentially more impressive with each thirty-first a bigger milestone for one so fragile yet enduring. Part of me thought she would never die. But she did. An innocuous afternoon after a Sunday lunch with her old owner. A home with a busted air conditioner and vomit blotches on the ground. She was breathing heavy but lucid, same as she had been the week prior. But the breathing got rougher and she was heaving and falling over like a seizing elderly person. When she wouldn't eat and wouldn't stand the realization crept in, the panic and despair. This is it, you know it. The inevitable. She lays wrapped in a beach towel prostrate on a metal slab with the clinical lighting fixtures on her. She won't get up, won't respond. But she whimpers in fear as the pain encroaches. The only placation is my hand on her head smoothing down her back. To tell her she's not alone here at the last. And I cry and retch in an impotent rage like a child again grieved at the inescapable fact that things get old and die and you are left behind a little less than you were before. How foolishly I wished it were not so. Wished for more time, always more time. An hour, a day, a week. Just not today. The doctor posits some vague diagnoses but they're unnecessary. She is sedated, assuredly, and I try to hold on to how she feels and smells and looks before the assistant takes her away and it's over. The house now feels emptier and unfurnished, small though the subtraction is. What remains is memory and carpet stains. Later she returns in an expensive wooden box with a funny portrait on the front and an engraving with the months and years hyphenated like it is some accomplishment, and it is. A privilege to have had those decades to pour love into something reciprocal with all the frustration and sorrow it entails.
And now for the first time in my life I am without them all. Yet there are no more tears to be shed, no loss to withstand. I continue and adjust and accept what has happened and what hasn't. The experiences that have run their course and finished. There is sadness, of course, but with it is a gratitude. I am thankful for the time I was given with them. I love them and I miss them. I want to be with them. My best friends. Goodbye.
A few blurred years pass before another literally walks into our lives, a homeless wanderer gone outside in. Fourth of July in a dark and crowded parking lot. The sky's green and red fire luminous in the river water. He is outlined by the spark sheen, his black woolen form hard to gauge in the night. He's big, maybe aggressive. Walking around aimless. He stinks, has no identification. So many cars parked and open with so many families to choose from and he lingers around us. He won't go away. Curiosity eventually becomes compassion and he comes back home with us looking jittery and from there he never leaves. What old parentage he had doesn't claim him and he endears to us a mystery never quite solved with his terrible ear infections and fear of the basement and rare Belgian breed. We call him Bear and to me he might as well have been. His brutish strength, fierce roar. A mouth that could rip flesh with dumb hatred and love with unconditional devotion. Two halves flipped like a coin so fast he's unaware of the difference. It's his nature, the purity of instinct. It powers his burly musculature after being run down by a stranger who drives away in fear and guilt never forgotten. He recovers strong as ever but it stays an early indicator toward fallibility, that the beast is not as great as his ferocity. So it was that the clutch of his life persisted as his body deteriorated and his legs gave out and the steroids no longer brought his old self out to run and play. When the day comes he isn't allowed the gift of submission. He writhes and chokes and his eyes bulge terrified as his heart is medically stopped. They administer no anesthetic to ease him and a grudge is kept against them still. I try now to see him as he wanted to be, galloping free across a field we often visited that seemed too pastoral to be real. Like a painting with the banks of the trees high above the grass and the cumulus plumage gigantic in the sky and the shaded waters to cool yourself in. He is center-framed in that acre, the land a little scrape of heaven imitated.
For twenty years she was there. Twenty, almost twenty-one. A gift given when I was four, almost five, by my half-sister whose hands were full. A spawned mix of small breeds that made a little blond thing like an animate toy. Her face bearing a triangular symmetry that was zealous to lade affection and uniquely fit for adoration. She arrives with a bed and a plaything that even then was torn from games and ratty with saliva. Samantha, a person's name. Born late October, rounded up to the holiday. She becomes ever present, as demanding as a fickle infant. Life involves itself in part with keeping her safe, coddled, satiated. Dedication evidenced by the peals of terror that accompanies her narrow dodge of an incoming car and the swift escapes made out the backdoor into neighborhoods lost and alone. And when she came back there were always outbursts of joy rarely experienced. So the years came and left. The scenery changes only once and she acclimates to the expanded space by running around the kitchen and the living room like a jackrabbit ecstatic every time we came back home. For each moment separated was an eternity for her. Each opened door a hysteric reunion. I get older, taller. She stays small, dwarfed. I go through schools, haircuts, shoes. I say goodbye to friends but never to her. Loss experienced mutually, painfully. But she remains. A constant when things rapidly shift, a simple exchange always kindled. The years stack exponentially more impressive with each thirty-first a bigger milestone for one so fragile yet enduring. Part of me thought she would never die. But she did. An innocuous afternoon after a Sunday lunch with her old owner. A home with a busted air conditioner and vomit blotches on the ground. She was breathing heavy but lucid, same as she had been the week prior. But the breathing got rougher and she was heaving and falling over like a seizing elderly person. When she wouldn't eat and wouldn't stand the realization crept in, the panic and despair. This is it, you know it. The inevitable. She lays wrapped in a beach towel prostrate on a metal slab with the clinical lighting fixtures on her. She won't get up, won't respond. But she whimpers in fear as the pain encroaches. The only placation is my hand on her head smoothing down her back. To tell her she's not alone here at the last. And I cry and retch in an impotent rage like a child again grieved at the inescapable fact that things get old and die and you are left behind a little less than you were before. How foolishly I wished it were not so. Wished for more time, always more time. An hour, a day, a week. Just not today. The doctor posits some vague diagnoses but they're unnecessary. She is sedated, assuredly, and I try to hold on to how she feels and smells and looks before the assistant takes her away and it's over. The house now feels emptier and unfurnished, small though the subtraction is. What remains is memory and carpet stains. Later she returns in an expensive wooden box with a funny portrait on the front and an engraving with the months and years hyphenated like it is some accomplishment, and it is. A privilege to have had those decades to pour love into something reciprocal with all the frustration and sorrow it entails.
And now for the first time in my life I am without them all. Yet there are no more tears to be shed, no loss to withstand. I continue and adjust and accept what has happened and what hasn't. The experiences that have run their course and finished. There is sadness, of course, but with it is a gratitude. I am thankful for the time I was given with them. I love them and I miss them. I want to be with them. My best friends. Goodbye.
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