2004-07-23 - 9:51 p.m.
David arrived unexpectedly this morning just before noon and asked me if I wanted to ride with him to the dome house. I was planning on going up anyway so I said, “Sure” and got ready to go. The phone rang a few moments later and it was Mom asking if David was there. She said there was something he would tell me on the way and she wouldn’t keep me. It struck me as strange that she would make such a call, but I didn’t think anymore about it until halfway along the drive David said that Mom and Dad were taking Teddy to the vet later in the afternoon and they were going to make a decision.
I wasn’t surprised because I had called Mom a few days back to tell her I didn’t think Teddy was getting any better. We had all hoped he could lick the cancer that was slowly killing him, but every day seemed to offer a new proof that he wouldn’t. I said if there was a chance of his beating it that would be one thing, but to just let him suffer knowing that in all likelihood it would be for naught seemed pointless and cruel. I remember thinking in this very precise and analytical manner as I made the case and the course of action ahead seemed all perfectly logical and clear.
Last night as I headed off for home, I saw Teddy standing in my parents' front yard panting and looking after me in that drooping, slightly side-cocked manner that the disease had reduced him to adopting. I remember wondering if I should turn around and go get him in case he should wander into the road and get killed, and then following that thought with the reflection that that might not be the worst thing that could happen. I experienced a slight pang of conscience realizing I could think such a thing.
After I had finished putting Paul’s sink in and connecting the plumbing, David asked if I wanted to go home, and on the way back we talked a bit more about Teddy. We agreed he was suffering and had, in fact, been dying slowly for weeks now. I said I hoped to get back in time to make the trip to the vet, at which David told me our parents had planned to leave at 2:30. I looked at the clock on the dash. It was almost twenty after three.
I wonder now if that was the moment Teddy died.
I was in the shower when Mom and Dad arrived home. I saw the van in the drive as I toweled off and went down to see if Teddy was still with us, somehow hoping, I guess, that he would be. I walked into the kitchen and nobody said much. Mom was going through some papers and asked if I wanted them. She handed me three sheets. I glanced down and saw a gold medallion mark in the bottom left corner of the top sheet with these words printed boldly across the heading in fancy type: CERTIFIED PEDIGREE. It didn’t really register what this was all about until Mom asked: “Would it be all right if we buried Teddy at your place?”
I still had some tools in David’s car and told him that I could put them in the garage for now if he wanted to get going. He said he wanted to go with us to my place and I realized he meant to help us bury Teddy and say goodbye.
So David and I dug the hole. We chose a place on the ridge just above the driveway in back of the house, where Teddy used to run. Mom says she can remember him so happy and running so fast across the yard here that his feet seemed to hardly hit the ground. I like to remember him that way, instead of the way he became. I can close my eyes and see him now. And yes, his feet hardly hit the ground.
