I need to start to be myself. Cause I'm sick of everybody else.
We had to write a memoir for english about a time that was important to us or provolked emotion. So, to be uber tragic, I wrote about when my dog died. And...I felt like posting it for lack of better things to do =DD
I remember watching his sad eyes as his legs fumbled beneath him unsuccessfully to lift his weight. All of his limbs had swollen in the past few weeks and it hurt to watch him struggle. He was my best friend in the whole world. We had grown up together and even shared a name…sort of. My parents named him after me, anyway. Jessie’s Jake. The best dog a little girl could ever ask for.
He was a terrible “mush”, as my mother always said. Ask her a second time and she’d call him “the dumbest box of rocks”, as well. Both were true. He was perhaps one of the dumbest dogs I’ve ever encountered, but he was the kindest and sweetest dog one would ever come across. Jake loved to greet people at the door-jump on them and lick their face. In many ways he reminded me of Snoopy in Peanuts when he licked Lucy until she screamed, “Ew, gross! Dog germs!”
That morning was probably the worst of my child hood. My younger years were never tragic. I hadn’t known anyone who had died before, or even known any family member to have a near death experience. I suppose I knew the definition of “death”, but only in the religious forms my parents had taught me-that everyone we love and who believed in God would go to heaven when they died, and we would see them again someday. However, faith in God does not prepare you for it, and definitely doesn’t make you understand the term “dead”. Especially when I looked into Jake’s eyes that sunny day in May and they were hazed with over-exertion and pain. My parents had warned me that this would happen soon. But to see Jake huddled in his bed, unable to move, shattered my young heart.
Once my parents decided that it was “Jake’s time”, the tears came like waterfalls. My father lifted my “puppy”, who was ten years old now and perhaps 90 pounds, into the bed of his truck. I will never forget the lack of emotion in his eyes as my dad closed the door and looked to my sister and I. If there is one thing I remember about Jake, it was how his eyes always gleamed with happiness at the site of his family. I remember his eyes saddening slightly when I cried, as his nose dug into my hand and his tongue slid over my fingertips, hoping that I would smile for him. I don’t remember the time in-between my father’s departure and his arrival home-I cried through the entirety of it. It was the first time I had actually mourned, perhaps even the very first time I had cried over something important, and not just a toy I couldn’t have or a scrape on my knee. Mourning was a very strong emotion for me, as the tears I cried were for my friend’s life.
My dad opened the back of his truck, and a motionless bag rested where my puppy once lay. We buried him in the covering to his bed-the same bed that had survived 10 years of my sister and I playing with him on it and a move from New York to New Jersey, and not to mention being dragged around the house as his “bedroom” changed from time to time. My mother, sister, and I all watched, helpless and hurt as my dad struggled to lift the dead weight off the bed of the truck and over to the side of the house. As if we weren’t put through enough traumas for the day, all four of us spent the next three or four hours drenched in tears as my father dug a six-foot hole for my puppy. Being ten, this seemed almost inhumane to me. My best friend’s ten years of existence all vanished in a six-foot hole.
The sun beat down without mercy, making the labor more strenuous. But a cloud hung low over that house as we gathered Jake’s toys and food blow to bury with him. “He’s happier now,” my mother had repeated several times. “He’s in a better place. We’ll see him again some day.” Then she would turn to me, her hand rubbing my shoulder reassuringly, and smile through tears. I would smile back, not sure what to think.
Since then, our third bird has died, and two cats were added to our family. Though I have loved every pet as a good friend and playmate, I will always remember Jake as my brother and best friend, and I will always love him as those, too. Since that day, my religious beliefs and morals have changed, but my mother’s words still give me hope that he is in a better place. A sunny spot with lush, thick grass, rolling around and gnawing on his favorite chew toy, perhaps. Anywhere where he is happy, flea-free, and in constant supply of his favorite flavor Milk-Bones.
He was a terrible “mush”, as my mother always said. Ask her a second time and she’d call him “the dumbest box of rocks”, as well. Both were true. He was perhaps one of the dumbest dogs I’ve ever encountered, but he was the kindest and sweetest dog one would ever come across. Jake loved to greet people at the door-jump on them and lick their face. In many ways he reminded me of Snoopy in Peanuts when he licked Lucy until she screamed, “Ew, gross! Dog germs!”
That morning was probably the worst of my child hood. My younger years were never tragic. I hadn’t known anyone who had died before, or even known any family member to have a near death experience. I suppose I knew the definition of “death”, but only in the religious forms my parents had taught me-that everyone we love and who believed in God would go to heaven when they died, and we would see them again someday. However, faith in God does not prepare you for it, and definitely doesn’t make you understand the term “dead”. Especially when I looked into Jake’s eyes that sunny day in May and they were hazed with over-exertion and pain. My parents had warned me that this would happen soon. But to see Jake huddled in his bed, unable to move, shattered my young heart.
Once my parents decided that it was “Jake’s time”, the tears came like waterfalls. My father lifted my “puppy”, who was ten years old now and perhaps 90 pounds, into the bed of his truck. I will never forget the lack of emotion in his eyes as my dad closed the door and looked to my sister and I. If there is one thing I remember about Jake, it was how his eyes always gleamed with happiness at the site of his family. I remember his eyes saddening slightly when I cried, as his nose dug into my hand and his tongue slid over my fingertips, hoping that I would smile for him. I don’t remember the time in-between my father’s departure and his arrival home-I cried through the entirety of it. It was the first time I had actually mourned, perhaps even the very first time I had cried over something important, and not just a toy I couldn’t have or a scrape on my knee. Mourning was a very strong emotion for me, as the tears I cried were for my friend’s life.
My dad opened the back of his truck, and a motionless bag rested where my puppy once lay. We buried him in the covering to his bed-the same bed that had survived 10 years of my sister and I playing with him on it and a move from New York to New Jersey, and not to mention being dragged around the house as his “bedroom” changed from time to time. My mother, sister, and I all watched, helpless and hurt as my dad struggled to lift the dead weight off the bed of the truck and over to the side of the house. As if we weren’t put through enough traumas for the day, all four of us spent the next three or four hours drenched in tears as my father dug a six-foot hole for my puppy. Being ten, this seemed almost inhumane to me. My best friend’s ten years of existence all vanished in a six-foot hole.
The sun beat down without mercy, making the labor more strenuous. But a cloud hung low over that house as we gathered Jake’s toys and food blow to bury with him. “He’s happier now,” my mother had repeated several times. “He’s in a better place. We’ll see him again some day.” Then she would turn to me, her hand rubbing my shoulder reassuringly, and smile through tears. I would smile back, not sure what to think.
Since then, our third bird has died, and two cats were added to our family. Though I have loved every pet as a good friend and playmate, I will always remember Jake as my brother and best friend, and I will always love him as those, too. Since that day, my religious beliefs and morals have changed, but my mother’s words still give me hope that he is in a better place. A sunny spot with lush, thick grass, rolling around and gnawing on his favorite chew toy, perhaps. Anywhere where he is happy, flea-free, and in constant supply of his favorite flavor Milk-Bones.