Saying Goodbye

Emotions, whether positive or negative, always seem to lead me to writing. I consign my feelings to language and hope for the best. This afternoon as I sit in this shabby little house without the small brown dog on the bed behind me, the sense of loss is acute. For fifteen and a half years, she was my shadow and my most devoted friend. And this morning, I bundled her into her favorite blue flannel blanket and took her for her last car ride.

She was eight weeks old when she started coming to work with me at the camera store. She spent her days in a dogbed on the sales counter and brought smiles to even our most curmudgenly customers.

“What is she?” people would ask and we would smile and say, “Her mama was a Yorkie but her daddy was a travelin' man.”

Customers brought their children to play with her while they shopped and the dog bed was always full of stuffed toys and treats and tiny designer sweaters. She recognized faces and voices and easily won over anyone who stopped by. She was petted and cooed at and given kisses. It was the best socialization you could've asked for. She was patient and gentle, affectionate and always perfectly well behaved. She never got in the way, rarely barked except in greeting, and never turned down an opportunity to be walked or held or admired. She was a sweet natured charmer of the very first order, a happy, healthy and confident little animal, so well adjusted and so little trouble that I was sometimes absent minded about her. I never thought about a time when she wouldn't be with me.

At her next to last annual vet visit, she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. She'd developed a persistent cough, not much more than a nuisance really, but over the next few months it got gradually but steadily worse. She began losing weight, her bright eyes began to dull, and though she still played with the cats and slept on my pillow every night, she tired

more easily and her sleep was often interrupted by a coughing spasm. In the last few days, I watched her struggle to breathe and slow down to the point of being willing to be carried. She was unsteady on her feet and overnight had become fragile, her belly swollen and tight, her coat rough and lackluster. A tumor the size of a marble suddenly appeared on her back leg. The coughing spells had stopped but there were other things waiting and I knew it was time. I think she did too.

I found myself automatically filling three food bowls tonight and after the two remaining dogs came in from outside, it took a minute to realize that she wasn't coming too. I slept badly, painfully aware of the empty space on my pillow, missing the sound of her gentle snoring in my ear. The house is still filled with animals but there's an emptiness to it that wasn't here yesterday. It's going to take some time to get used to.

So it's true. When all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.

Erin Bucchianeri

Last Days

It's just shy of 4 in the morning when the small brown dog begins to cough, trying to clear the fluid from her lungs. It goes on for five painful minutes and leaves her shaken, short of breath and anxious. It leaves me trying to pretend it wasn't as bad as it sounded but in my heart I know I'm losing her. It leaves me praying to a god I'm not even certain exists that just this once, could You not take her in her sleep.

I promised myself - and her - that when there were more bad days than good, I'd let her go but each time I think we're there, she rallies. It's been fifteen and a half years and she's still active, reasonably agile, perky enough to play and even chase the occasional cat. At the same time, the coughing spells come more often, last longer, and are more severe. When they pass, I comfort her as best I can.

Of all the dogs who have shared my bed and board, she is the most ordinary and at the same time, the most exceptional. She's always been a naturally happy animal, even tempered and remarkably easy to train, calmly tolerant of every new addition over the years, friendly to strangers and patient with children. She's never been destructive or aggressive or even mildly bad mannered. At times, she was so laid back and well behaved, she was easy to overlook. Nobody ever accused of her being pretty but there has always been something endearing about those long legs, Dumbo ears, doe eyes and wild hair. She made friends of everyone she met and it was impossible not to love her. She charmed people. She's earned her rest.

I tell myself I will know when her bad days outnumber her good ones. I tell myself I will not allow her to suffer needlessly just so I can keep her with me. I hope I can make that be true.

Just not today.

The Fitzpatricks

If all you have in the way of regrets is that you never got a motorcycle or a tattoo, chances are you'll be ok.  But still. 

 The Fitzpatricks lived in sprawling and mostly neglected triple decker in a down at the heels part of town. In spring and summer, the old house was usually covered up with kids and, much to the consternation of the neighbors, loud and pretty much trashed, pretty much all of the time.

I lost track of how many kids there were actually were - Miz Fitz, as she was known - seemed to churn out one or two a year, regular as Ex-Lax, some said, and it was rumored but never proven that she took in fosters for the monthly support checks. At any rate, the old place looked more like a rundown orphanage than a family home most of the time. The unkept lawn was littered with discarded toys and broken bikes and music blared from the open windows from early morning to late at night. They were a rough crew, the Fitzpatricks, and after a half dozen leather jacketed teenagers took to dropping by on the weekends and congregating on the front porch, the neighbors shuttered their windows, bolted their doors and locked up their daughters.

One of the younger girls, Kathleen, was my age. Since early elementary school, alphabetical order had determined that we would be paired off for fire drills and such and in the early 60's, we were in junior high homeroom together, at least on those days when she actually came to school. We weren't friends but we had known each other a long time and while I had mostly managed to overcome my initial terror of her, I had no idea what she thought of me and to be honest, I was afraid to ask. You didn't mess with someone who had a temper and a killer right hook. You didn't even ask about her bruises. You rode the bus home in silence and walked those twelve blocks - eight to her street, four more to mine - without speaking but still managing to step on every crack. Now and again, she would land with both feet and a grim smile.

“See ya,” I would tell her.

“Guess so,” she would answer and shrug.

It was hard to explain, but I always felt bad watching her walk away. I can still see her plaid skirt with the hem falling out, the sweater with the darned elbows, and the five and dime purse with the broken strap slung over one shoulder. Saddle shoes were all the rage but Kathy wore scuffed up black flats or cheap sneakers. Her slip, the elastic waist held togther with safety pins was always showing and there was usually the telltale bulge of a pack of cigarettes either in her back or side pocket. As much as she scared me, there was still a part of me that felt sorry for her but I'd rather have taken a beating than tell her so.

Gangs were coming into their own by the time we got to high school and some people said it was inevtable that the Fitzpatricks would start one or drift into one. Kathy began arriving at school on the back of a chrome covered Harley Davidson, her arms wrapped around a leather jacketed,

long haired and bearded biker with head to to toe tattoos. She smoked openly, defying the school rules and daring anyone to stop her. Gone were the ragged skirts and patched sweaters I remembered from junior high, replaced with skin tight jeans and scandalous halter tops. Her high school career lasted exactly one week before she was expelled for dress code violations, alcohol, and fighting. I watched her swagger across the parking lot on that last day, saw her climb onto the back of a motorcyle, raise her middle finger to the school and then roar off. I heard she didn't go home that day but the only thing I knew for sure was that she never came back to school and it was the last time I ever saw her. A part of me envied her ride and her freedom.

“White welfare trash,” my mother proclaimed smugly, “Good riddance is what I say.”

The triple decker was sold later that year, renovated and turned into garden apartments far nicer than any of the existing homes around it. The Fitzpatricks quietly moved on, as we all do, but for a long time the sound of a Harley Davidson would make me stop and look around, just in case I might catch a ride.

The Island Way

Aunt Penelope, looking all the world like Mary Poppins with her ribboned straw hat slightly askew from the wind and an umbrella tucked under one arm, nudged the back door open with one high button'd shoe and flashed me a brilliant smile.

“Hello, dear,” she said distractedly, “I need to see your grandmother, if you please.”

“Come in, Penny!” Nana called from the pantry, “You're just in time for tea!”

“Mark my words, child,” Aunt Penelope said as she swept through the door, petticoats rustling and long skirts swirling around her delicate ankles, “Timing is everything in life!”

“Yes'm,” I said obediently, “Everybody's on the sunporch.”

She nodded, handed over her umbrella, and crossed the kitchen and living room in quick, light, spirited steps. There wasn't much to my Aunt Penelope - she stood barely 5 feet and couldn't have weighed more than 100 pounds straight out of the sea - she was tiny all over with a 20 inch waist that was the envy of the island women and doll-like hands and feet that many would have killed for. Worse, she was genuinely sweet-natured, happily married, cheerful to a fault, and impossible to dislike, a modest woman of modest means who was always in shirtwaists and long skirts, always with an umbrella under one arm, always with a smile for everyone she met .In many ways, she had never quite all the way left the 1920's – she tended home and hearth and husband with a remarkable energy and focus and, as the ladies liked to say, Cap'n Jack was in need of all she had to spare.

Cap'n Jack drank. To excess. Every day. He was a bear of a man, towering over his dainty wife by feet rather than inches, easily out weighing her by twice, maybe more. He was as dark as she was fair, as inward as she was outward. He rarely ventured off their four acres, preferring the company of his farm animals to that of the villagers and that of his wife to his farm animals. If ever there was a happy, harmless drunk, it was Cap'n Jack. On the single occasions that one of the island women had gently suggested she leave him, Aunt Penelope had been visibly shocked.

“Leave Jack?” she'd asked, wide eyed with feigned innocence, “Why, I'd sooner die! The man would be as lost without me as I'd be without him! And where would I go, pray tell? I think the world and all of you, Clara, but you'd be best tendin' your own garden and let me tend mine!”

Miz Clara had blushed and protested that she'd meant no harm and Aunt Penelope had just smiled.

“I know you meant well,” she relented, “but I reckon I know what's best for me and Jack. No need for you to worry.”

In the interests of peace, the subject wasn't raised again. The island way was to speak your mind and move on, regardless of how your words were received. It was a valuable lesson.  

I never did know what Aunt Penelope had come for that day. Nana shut the sunporch door and she and the women clustered around the little table by the windows, solemn and serious-faced, speaking in lowered voices for the better part of an hour. When the factory whistle blew at five, they broke up, each woman giving Aunt Penelope a hug and then leaving one by one by the side door. Whatever the crisis had been, it had been confronted, dealt with and dismissed. Unity was also the island way.

Some ten years later, Cap'n Jack's drinking caught up with him, overcame his liver and then in a matter of a week or two, took his life.  He died at home on his four acres with Aunt Penelope by his bedside.  She never faltered, never wavered, never would hear a word against him even after his death and to no one's real surprise, turned down a cemetery plot at the Baptist church and with John Sullivan's help, quietly buried him at the edge of the property, planting wildflowers on his grave and decorating it with driftwood.  On clear days, when the sunshine fell onto the grave, the driftwood shone, the flowers bloomed, and the memories stayed sweet.

"When it comes to lovin' and bein' loyal, " Nana remarked, decades before the concept of denial became commonplace, "I reckon we all see what we want to and pass over the parts that ain't so pretty."

Dollars & Sense

Sign on the stack of copy paper: “2 for $10”.

Cashier (when I pull out one package): "Don't you want 2?"

Me: "No, thanks, I just need one."

Cashier: "But you can get 2 for $10."

Me: "But I only need one."

She sighs and rings up one package and says “9.99”.

Me: "Wait. If they're 2 for $10, why isn't 1 $5?"

Cashier: "You have to buy 2 to get the discount."

I sigh, add a 2^nd package and say “2 for $10 isn't the same as $8.99 each or 2 for $10. You need better signage.”

It's the small, stupid things that break people.