Is it you?
Is it them?
Does it matter?
You enjoy sitting with the adults, but you can't help feeling lonely and a little out of place sometimes too. This isn't home and you miss home. But every year you decide you'll try again to make things better, more homelike. But you try, year after year, and it never works. You say hello, you get an awkward "hey" back. The people around you look at you like you're from another planet, and deep inside, you feel like you are from another planet. And it's a lonely feeling. But, eventually, you give up. You accept things the way they are. Every Sunday you leave as soon as the service is done. You walk, quickly and quietly out the entrance to the Church, and down the street. You stop, look both ways, cross the street, ten more steps, and you're there!
You go to the garage.
You enter the code.
You enter the house.
It's cool inside, quiet, and so calm and familiar. You relax. A smile forms at the corners of your mouth as you start to hear a rattling from a cage and an excited bark. You close the door and head through the kitchen towards the excited beagle in his kennel. "Hey buddy," You say gently, "calm down boy, calm down, it's just me..." and you open the cage. He bursts out, eyes big, tail wagging, ready to explode with excitement. He jumps up on your legs, he barks, he runs around the house, and you try to calm him down. Finally you go to the back door and let him out. When he's done his business he comes back in, calmer, but still excited and still wagging his tail. He's excited because you're there. He's excited because he knows you, and he loves you.
You pet him.
You sit on a stool at the counter.
He lies down at your feet.
And you both sit in content silence. You've done this almost every Sunday of every summer for three years. At the end of the summer you leave. You're gone eight months. You come back...and he still remembers you. He still knows you. And every year he gets more excited when he sees you, because he loves you, and he knows you love him. You never do anything very special for him. Never give him treats or pet him more than anyone else. But he accepts you for who you are, he greets you with excitement and a smile every Sunday, and he cheers you up when everything else seems so dull. And every Sunday he takes away a little of the loneliness.
You grow older.
He gets older.
That's life.
You're eighteen now. Your friend calls. You find it odd that she's calling. You talk about this and that...hasn't been long since you saw her. You wonder what the phone call is really about...maybe she wants to plan something? No. She's called to tell you that Buddy's gone. She reminds you about how he was acting sick last Sunday, how he didn't have much energy, and sat with his head hanging. He didn't get better. They took him to the vet. His stomach had twisted, and he was getting old. There was a surgery they could do, but only a 50/50 chance of it working...in the end, they had to put him down. Your friend tries not to cry as she tells you. You sit there, shocked. You tell your mom, you cry. You tell your sister, you cry. All those days you went over, not just Sundays, but other days too. All those times he cheered you up. Just the way he would greet you could make you smile.
And now he was gone.
It didn't seem possible.
But it was true.
Funny how the simplest, silliest things in life can sometimes be the things we find the most joy in. Buddy was just a dog, a little beagle, but he was so much more than that. People write corny stories about their pets all the time. I suppose this would have to be one of mine, and he wasn't even my dog! Buddy was friendly, energetic, and sometimes lazy. I miss his bark. I miss his greeting me by jumping up and trying to lick me, even if I'd been gone for eight months. I miss his big eyes and wagging tail. I miss how he used to sit right in the middle of whatever game we were playing when he felt like he was being ignored. It's been a year, but I can never go to my friend's house without thinking of him.
Buddy was a dog, I'll never see him again.
He's gone, and I miss him.
But I remember to thank God for the little things in life now...before they're gone.
(photo by C. Becker)
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