Walking in the Shadow of Death

She was getting old. We knew it would happen sooner rather than later, but still we weren’t prepared for the end to come when it did.

Daddy had a migraine headache that morning when my 2-year-old son Kelric and I came downstairs for breakfast. I could see our beloved family dog Wendy lying in the family room next to the kitchen. “Wendy?” I called.

She didn’t respond and I started to worry. Her hearing had been fading of late, so she didn’t always respond right away. “Wendy?” I said again as I knelt next to her on the floor. The light was too dim to be sure whether she was breathing or not. So I touched her side, and through the thick fur I couldn’t tell if her body was warm or cold.

All doubt was removed, however, when I lifted her front leg and felt the stiffness. Our dog was dead, and my little boy was kneeling next to me, wondering why she didn’t wake up. I needed to wash my hands. I wanted to take Kelric away from the body, and shield him from ever grieving a death. But it was too late.

“Mommy, why doesn’t she get up?” he asked me.

This was no time to lie to him. “Because she’s dead, sweat pea,” I told him.

“Mommy, why are you crying?” Kelric asked.

I opened my mouth but no words came out. I was crying because our Great Pyrenees was twelve and a half years old, and she was gone. My husband picked her from the litter when she was just three days old, and she had lived with him since she was eight weeks old. She came with the marriage. She had known I was pregnant before I did, suddenly following me everywhere and always keeping close. My husband joked that he had lost his dog.

Wendy had treated Kelric like her own puppy, with amazing patience and protectiveness.

“Mommy!” Kelric demanded. “I need you to talk to me.” I heard a touch of panic.

“I’m sad,” I responded. “I’m crying because Wendy’s gone.”

“She’s right here, Mommy,” Kelric said, pointing.

I wanted my husband’s strong arms around me. I wanted someone to entertain Kelric so I could have time to myself to grieve and to remember. It wasn’t to be, however. Relentlessly my child pressed on.

“Why she’s not using her legs?”

“Because she died, honey. She doesn’t need to walk anymore.”

“Why she’s not eating her food?”

“Because she died, honey. She doesn’t need to eat anymore.”

Kelric was quiet briefly as he tried to take it all in. I could feel his growing desperation, how he needed me to pull it together, to not fall apart the way I desperately wanted to.

“Mommy, I’m hungry. I’m not died.”

Laughter escaped from my lips. A reassured child smiled at me.

“Of course, sweetie. Just let me wash my hands.”

An hour or so later my husband was moving around, the migraine medicine having finally kicked in. I stopped him as he reached the bottom of the stairs before he could see his dog. All I had to choke out was, “Wendy” in a voice that threatened to start crying, and he knew exactly what had happened.

I had warned Kelric to expect his daddy to be upset. Kelric blithely sat in the living room and watched a cartoon movie while his daddy grieved and cried. Later, a neighbor helped my husband move Wendy’s body to the pickup truck where he took her to the vet for cremation.

Kelric expressed confusion when I told him that Wendy was in the small wooden box we received a week or so later.

“But, how does her head fit in there?” he asked. I struggled to explain cremation and ashes.

I wondered if my toddler was even affected by our dog’s passing because he seemed so calm and removed at the time. Events have crept up over the last year and a half to show me that he was deeply affected. More than once during dinner Kelric has suddenly burst into tears, telling us that he’s sad that Wendy’s gone and he doesn’t want to miss her. It breaks my heart to see his pain, but I want him to feel the grief and get through it. I never want him to bury his pain.

Still, I knew we had trouble when he asked me if Daddy was going to die soon.

“Why do you think Daddy’s going to die?” I asked him, shocked. I wondered if he knew something I didn’t. My husband is older than most fathers of three-year-olds. Strangers routinely mistake him for Kelric’s grandfather.

“Because Daddy has gray hair. Daddy is old. You die when you’re old.”

My child had hit upon a fear that flits through every person’s mind: a realization that someone we love won’t always be there in the flesh for us. I thought of my own battle with breast cancer three years earlier, and realized that he deserved an honest answer.

“Everybody dies someday,” I told him gently. “But I don’t think any of us is going to die anytime soon.”

“I’m not going to die,” he responded with a smile. “Because I’m not old. I’m new.” My child looked at me with eyes full of innocence. “You’re new, too.”

At that moment I felt old — and wistful about my own innocence lost.

“I think we’ll all be around for a good long time,” I reassured him, hoping I wasn’t wrong.

Kelric beamed. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re all new.”