Age 8
I had gone to the store for my mother, and when I arrived I saw the lady storekeeper hitting a dog with a rolled up newspaper. My heart melted in compassion for that dog, and I approached him and pet him, and he followed me home. There wasn't a lot of love in our home, and I began to experience for the first time another living being actually loving me. Our hearts knit, and that dog was with me everywhere I went. We were three siblings at home, but that dog was mine.
One night, I remember looking out of my bedroom window in the dark, and I prayed to God, "Oh God, if ever I'm going to lose this dog, please take him now before I love him too much." I muse on this now, wondering why I was thinking of losing him. Where did this fear of loss come in at such an early age, before I had known anyone who died, before I had been aware of death, before I could have been aware of loss? Why did those thoughts even occur to me? I don't know...
Every day when I came home from school, my dog was sitting on the first step, looking in my direction, alert, head straight up, waiting for me. As soon as he saw me he bolted on all fours and jumped all over me. It's hard to explain how a person could love an animal as much as I did that dog. He loved me. I wasn't used to this. This animal loved me.
One day when I came home from school, he wasn't there. I couldn't believe it -he was ALWAYS there! Shock settled into my soul and I went looking for him. My sister and I searched everywhere, calling his name, pleading with life to return my dog to me. Even my mother took pity, and went out with the car looking for him. As soon as I woke up the next morning, I took my sister and we went looking for him again, yelling out his name as we went.
We came to the school yard and suddenly I heard a whimper. Could it be? The school building was three stories high, with outside steps going up and around until the top. We followed the sound and there he was ...he had gone up to the third story and he couldn't get back down. I ran to him and threw my arms around him and he cried and saturated my face with his kisses. We carried him home.
It felt like a miracle because he could have gone anywhere. I was too young to reason that he had followed me to school and that when he saw he couldn't go into the school where I was, he climbed to the top, then couldn't get back down. What a joyous reunion, what a celebration, my dog was home!
Weeks later, or months, I don't remember, the lady upstairs told my mother that the dog didn't look right. I didn't see anything wrong with him. But she had lost her dog to "distemper," and was concerned that my dog might have been afflicted with the germ that might still be in the house.
So my mother took my dog to the vet and left him there overnight. But that overnight went into two nights, then three nights, and then four ...and I dearly missed him. So before leaving for school one morning I told my mother that I knew where the vet's office was, and that I'd be late coming home from school because I needed to go see my dog.
I saw a look of distress come across my mother's face, but I didn't "get it." She put her head down and told me that the vet had called and the dog had died.
I descended for the first time in my life into that place in hell where shock and pain dwell. I was so stunned I couldn't move for a few minutes. This was my first experience with overwhelming trauma. I turned around and went into another room and opened a closet door and went inside so that she wouldn't see me crying. I'm not sure why I was so adamant that she not see me crying. Why didn't I feel that I had a mother, and that she was supposed to take me in her arms and comfort me? I don't know how I knew that wasn't going to happen.
So I cried alone. In the closet. Heart-wrenching, hysterical sobs I never knew a person could experience. I saw the brush I used to brush my dog's hair with, with some of his hairs still on the brush, and it made me cry bitterly. But silently. In the closet.
