Doctors hurt too…
Leave it to a dog to break the hearts of me and my family.
For the past seven years I’ve sent out a Christmas letter
from the point of view of our little white and brown-spotted, Havanese dog,
Sammy, put into words I imagined he’d use.
Sadly, he passed away this summer.
Holy crap! It was—and still
is—heart wrenching. A dog leaving a huge
void in our lives? It’s still taking a
bit of time to get over this.
Why is that?
I suppose I’ll always see him as a child, one who never grew
up, and perpetually dependent on our love and attention, but returning it back
multiple times over. He was content in-the-moment,
forgiving of everything and yet happy with the simplest of things—a model for
all of us to follow. He gave us much
more than we ever gave him. Call me a
stupid and silly grown man, but I still tear up thinking about him.
 |
| Our late dog, Sammy, peering out the window with his toy lamb |
Anyway, below is “his” Christmas letter for this year, and I
admit the hardest to write. It took me
longer to start the letter than to do the actual writing.
The picture at the very beginning is the front of our card,
formed in a tri-fold pamphlet with photos on one side and the following letter
on the backside:
A Christmas Carol
2019
The Ghosts of
Sammy Past, Present and Future
In One Blissful
Reverie of Dog-Speak
I
died. That’s the God’s-honest
truth. I wasn’t doing so well back in
July and I quietly went to sleep but arose in this wonderful place. So I’m writing to you from another plane of
existence, so to speak, where past and future all blend into one glorious
here-in-the-now present.
After
drying her tears, Lauren eventually resumed school and started her junior year
at Gonzaga in the nursing program. This
is her clinical year with direct patient care at hospitals and other medical
facilities. Some of it is gross but
mostly intriguing and exciting though not as great as caring for dogs like me,
and I was a handful, I’ll admit with a smile on my face. She lives in an apartment with three other
humans. She does her own cooking and I
saw her making salmon one night and it brought back fond memories when I always
got the first bite off the grill or stove.
Nick
flew in from Seattle to see me in my final Earthly days. He’s finishing his Master’s Degree in applied
mathematics, and now that I’m up here I have a perfect grasp of everything he
does, though the rest of my mortal family are still clueless when he explains
it to them. It’s like a foreign language
and they don’t have the benefit of translating it all into Dog-Speak which is
the ultimate language that explains everything.
Mom
still wishes I was around. I’d follow
her all around when I was a pup and later watched her experiment with different
types of cooking since I was the greatest taste-tester anyone could imagine. I always enjoyed hiding under the dining
table whenever she wanted to take me for a walk, hiding amongst scores of
Wiener-Monkeys (hotdog-shaped squeaky things with the face of a monkey—go
figure) and other toys, making her crawl under the table to try and get
me. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I could do that all day. She still tears up from time to time and I
wish she wasn’t so sad but she cheers up whenever she recalls the silly things
I did, such as peeing on a newspaper picture of some political dude when I was
potty-training. She won’t admit it but
she needs another puppy.
Dad
is serving as my surrogate writer since I lack physical paws to do so. He’s doing an OK job. He still runs barefoot
and started racing again, having done some 5Ks and a 10 mile race all without shoes,
but his feet will never, ever get as tough as mine, no matter how delusional
his thinking gets. When asked why he
likes racing he says, “I enjoy beating little kids and body-checking pregnant
women with strollers,” on the way to the finish. When they’re in town, Nick and Lauren ran
some of those races with Dad and as Nick puts it, “I can’t let the Old Man beat
me!”
If
you’ve lost a loved one this year, please don’t despair. I see them here. They’re kind to me, scratching my head,
rubbing my belly and tossing Wiener-Monkeys for me to chase. Like me, they’re eternally happy, although
their tongues aren’t sticking out like mine, but they’re happy
nonetheless. Remember the great moments,
how they shaped and enriched your life and added to your happiness. Take solace knowing they’re in a good place
here with God. Oh yeah, and Jesus, which
is what this (and every) season is all about—isn’t it?
See
ya.
The Late
Sammy Fong
for
Randy, Nancy, Nicholas & Lauren
Comments
Post a Comment