“Well,” my mom replied, “that settles it. I’m going to call her Star!”
Mom’s shooting star has continued to shower her with blessings. After twenty-plus years of living in Florida— for Dad’s sake—my father suddenly agreed to move to Colorado where my mom’s sister lives. They have been looking at a home there that has been sitting empty for over two years. Mom thinks it’s been waiting for her. It even has a fenced-in backyard for Star.
When I talk to my mom now, she is bubbly and excited about the future—so different from the despairing woman who just a few short months ago was feeling so unbearably lonely. Now that’s what I call, “Star Power!”
Mary Klitz
Max
Adog is one of the few remaining reasons why some people can be persuaded to go for a walk.
O. A. Battista
Over the past few years, depression has become a common topic; even TV commercials advertise the latest drugs to treat it. This was not the case in 1986. People knew about depression, but it was not really accepted as a legitimate illness. Like alcoholism, depression fell more into the category of a “character flaw.” It was not something people talked much about, and it was certainly not something you wanted anyone to know that you had.
By 1986, I had suffered for five years with the terrible illness known as depression. I had become a shell of the person I’d once been, going through the motions of life but not really living anymore. Despair was my daily companion. Each day was a struggle to survive the darkness that made me want to end it all and seek peace in death. I had been to doctors who prescribed drugs, and I had been in therapy. Nothing had worked. My family loved me and tried to help, but still I couldn’t make my way out of the awful pit I found myself in. I was so ill that my once-a-week trip into town for groceries was an ordeal that I dreaded all week and that afterward left me unable to function for the rest of the day. My five-year-old son was all that kept me hanging on—though I was so numb I could hardly feel my love for him or his love for me. Yet I knew that ending my suffering would cast a terrible shadow on this innocent little boy’s life, and so, even though I didn’t want to, I kept what was left of myself alive day after day.
That was my situation when I walked into the Wayne CountyHumane Society one sunnyOctober day. Although it was unusual for me to be able to leave my home, I was there on an errand for my landlady, who wanted me to find a dog for her.
I should explain. All my life I have loved dogs and lived with dogs, but during my pregnancy and the years following, we lived in a rental and the landlady wouldn’t hear of our having a dog. Despite my begging and promising to take excellent care of a dog and not let it destroy the apartment, my landlady steadfastly refused. Though by nature I am not a hateful person, in the midst of my depression it was easy to sincerely hate this woman who seemed bent on depriving me of the one thing I thought might give me a small bit of pleasure in my otherwise painful existence.
Hate is a terrible thing; I knew this. When my hate continued to grow, I sought therapy. I also prayed, asking God to help me love my enemy, to truly feel some measure of love for this woman. Over a period of weeks and months, I made progress and we became friends of sorts. I found out that she actually liked dogs as much as I did. She didn’t have one herself because she thought it wouldn’t be fair to her renters if she had a dog while not allowing us to have any. My heart went out to her. She was old and didn’t have many years left to enjoy a dog. I assured her no one would care if she got a dog; that, in fact, I thought she should get one right away, and I would be glad to help her find one.
So when I walked into the shelter that day, I was looking for a dog for my landlady—now my friend—to share her golden years. I looked at them all. A long, low, brown and white dog in particular really appealed to me, but I quickly passed him by because of his size. He was about fifty pounds, much too big for my frail landlady. I did find a sweet little dog who I knew would be perfect for her. When I got back to her house and told her about him, she said she’d been thinking and had decided that getting a dog was a bad idea because of her failing health. She had few relatives and fewer friends, and didn’t want to end up in the hospital or nursing home with no one to take her dog. I was disappointed for her but I understood.
That night, my depression was still very much with me, but I did feel a little bit better just from trying to help someone else. And the fact that my hate had been turned into love by the grace of God was something I knew was wonderful—even though I couldn’t feel the wonderfulness of it because of my illness.
The next day my landlady called and told me she had reconsidered letting me have a dog. She said I could have one providing I brought it over to visit with her. I was so shocked I couldn’t speak. I came as close to having happy feelings as I was able. I actually got into the car without stopping to be afraid to go somewhere, and drove straight to the shelter to find the brown and white dog I’d seen before.
All the dogs were jumping and barking except for the one long, low, brown and white dog. He was just standing and slowly wagging his tail, looking up at me with the kindest eyes I had ever seen. I started to open the door of his run to get better acquainted, but then decided to be cautious because the back door of the building was wide open, letting in the glorious sunny fresh air of the October day. This dog looked like he had a lot of basset hound in him. I had no doubt he would try to make a break for that door and the outside delights well known to all hunting dogs, especially pleasant on a crisp autumn morning like this one.
So as I opened his gate, I quickly squatted down and held my arms out wide to be able to head him off if he bolted. This dog had no thoughts of that. With great deliberation, he waddled straight into my arms, sat down and leaned against me, fastening those kind eyes on mine and giving a great sigh of contentment. The very tip of his tail wagged ever so gently.
As he continued to gaze at me, I felt something miraculous taking place inside me. Looking into the dog’s loving gaze, I saw myself as I had once been, before my illness, before the darkness overtook me and drained me of myself. This dog’s gaze looked past all that. He saw the real me, the healthy me that was still in there somewhere. And looking into his eyes, I saw it, too. I remembered who I was!
I began to cry. Holding the dog in my arms I cried and cried—with joy, with sorrow for the wreck I had become, but mostly with relief—because I knew who I was again and knowing that was a way out of the pit I had been in for five very miserable years. It was like seeing the Promised Land or being handed the key to open a prison cell. It was a miracle. The dog sat there and never moved while I held him and cried. He took my tears and all the pain of my five-year illness in exchange for a few minutes of human contact. Truly this dog was a gift from God to me. I believed it at that moment, and I came to know it even better in the years that followed.
Max came home with me. (And yes, we made regular visits to my landlady, who always had a cookie for him.) Max became my best friend, my brother, my teacher and, most of all, my healer. With Max at my side, I was eventually able to leave my home without feelings of fear and panic. Instead of worrying if my depression was showing, I concentrated on people’s reaction to Max—which was always positive since Max, being mostly basset hound, was not only very friendly but also amusing to look at.
Together Max and I attended obedience classes, and also took many rambling walks in the country where our bond became even stronger and our delight in and understanding of each other continued to increase. After a year or so my depression was over. I was out of the pit. It was unbelievable to me. I could love my son and my husband and feel their love for me. I was me again: able to love and laugh and live my life once more.
I grew to depend on Max’s constant loving gaze, and many times over the years his devotion was a great comfort to me—on hot days he could always make me laugh just by lying on his back on the couch, with all four paws in the air, soaking up the A/C.
Max had a good life. He was much lov
ed by me, as well as by all my friends and family, until the day he left me. When he took his last breath, I held him in my arms and whispered in his ear the words I had told him a thousand times in our fourteen devoted years together: “Best dog in the universe.”
At times I wonder if I would have recovered from my depression without Max. I don’t know. I do know that the moment I looked into his loving eyes, something inside me began to shift. Do I believe that angels can come to us in our darkest hours wearing funny, furry, brown and white dog suits? You bet I do!
Susan Boyer
A Lesson from Luke
One bright, sunny afternoon in September our golden retriever, Luke, rose from a nap to go for our usual walk to the park. I should say he attempted to rise, because as he stood, he wobbled, tried to get his balance, then collapsed. My heart did somersaults as my husband and I carried him to the car and sped to the vet’s office. After hours of blood tests, exams and an ultrasound, we learned the grim news: Luke had hemangiosarcoma, an inoperable cancer of the blood vessels.
“How long does he have?” I asked through my tears, my arms wrapped around Luke, hugging him to my heart.
“I can’t say for sure,” the vet told us. “Weeks. Maybe only days.”
I barely made it to the car before I broke down in uncontrollable sobs. My husband didn’t handle the news any better. We held on to each other and bawled. How could Luke have gotten so sick without our realizing it? Sure, he was ten years old, but you’d never know it. He ate every meal with the gusto of a starving piglet, and just that morning he’d chased his tennis ball as if it were filled with his favorite doggy biscuits. He couldn’t have cancer, not our Luker Boy, not our baby.
For the next several days we hovered over him, studying him diligently. We took slow walks around the neighborhood, and instead of throwing the ball, we tossed it right to his mouth and let him catch it. One day while dusting the furniture, I picked up his blue pet-therapist vest—Luke had been a volunteer with the Helen Woodward Animal Center pet therapy department, and had visited centers for abused and neglected children. I held the vest to my cheek and started to cry. Why Luke? He was such a sweet dog; he deserved to live.
As I started to put the vest away in a drawer, Luke trotted over, wagging his tail. He looked at me expectantly, his ears perked up and his tongue hanging out.
“You want to put on your vest and go to work, don’t you?” I knelt and scratched behind his ears. I could swear he grinned at me.
Although there could be no running or jumping, the following day Luke joined the other pet-therapy dogs on a visit to the children’s center. I’m often envious of Luke’s ability to light up kids’ faces just by being himself. They giggle and clap their hands when he gives them a high ten or catches a cookie off his nose. But the best reaction by far comes when the children ask him, “Do you love me?” and he answers with an emphatic, “Woof!” The kids whoop and holler, continuing to shout, “Do you love me?” He always answers them.
On this particular day I wanted to make sure that Luke enjoyed himself, so I wasn’t paying as much attention to the children as I usually did. A girl about nine or ten years old inched over to us. Her narrow shoulders slumped and her head hung down; she reminded me of a drooping sunflower. Luke wagged his tail as she neared us and licked her cheek when she bent to pet him. She sat next to us on the lawn and smiled at Luke, but her large brown eyes still looked sad.
“I wish people would die at ten years old the way dogs do,” she said.
Stunned, I could only stare at her. None of the kids knew that Luke had cancer. Luke rolled over on his back and the girl rubbed his belly.
Finally, I asked her, “Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m ten, and I wish I would die.”
Her sorrow curled around my heart and squeezed it so tightly, my breath caught. “Are things so bad?”
“The worst. I hate it here.”
What could I say to her? I couldn’t tell her that she shouldn’t feel that way, or that she had a wonderful life ahead of her. What good would that do? It wasn’t what she needed to hear. I put my hand gently on her back and asked her name.
“Carly.”
“Carly, you want to know something? Luke here has cancer. He’s dying. And he wishes more than anything that he could go on living. You’re perfectly healthy, yet you want to die. It just isn’t fair, is it?”
Carly snapped her head up and looked at me. “Luke’s dying?”
I nodded, swallowing back tears. “He doesn’t have much time—a week, maybe two . . . or just a few days . . . we don’t know for sure.”
“Shouldn’t he be at home or in the hospital?” she asked.
“He wanted to visit with you kids, to bring you some happiness. Just like you, things aren’t good for him either. He probably hurts a lot inside.” I paused, wondering if she was old enough to understand. “But by coming here, it’s as if he’s trying to make every minute of his life count for something.”
Carly sat silently, looking at Luke while she softly rubbed his belly. “Poor Luke,” she said, almost in a whisper. When she raised her head and met my gaze, her eyes looked wary, almost accusing. “You think I should be glad I’m alive and not wanting to die, don’t you? Even if I’m stuck here.”
I took a few seconds to try to gather my thoughts. “Maybe you could make it sort of like a game. Every day try to think of at least one good thing about being alive.”
The counselors began calling the children back to their classrooms. I looked straight into Carly’s eyes, trying to reach her. “If nothing else, there’s always hope things will get better.”
“Come on, Carly,” a counselor called out.
Carly stood. “Will you come back and see me?”
“Yes, I will. I promise. And you’ll tell me lots of reasons to live, right?”
“Right.” She gave me a big nod, and then ran off to join her classmates.
The next week, though Luke’s walk was slower and more labored, we visited the children’s center again. Carly didn’t show up. Alarmed, I asked one of the counselors where she was. They told me that she’d gone to live with a foster family. My heart settled back into place. Good for you, Carly.
Twelve days later, Luke lost his battle with cancer.
When I think of him now, I try to focus on what I told Carly: that Luke made every minute of his life count for something. Perhaps he inspired Carly to do that, too. I hope that she, and all the other children we visited, benefited from being with Luke. I know I did.
Christine Watkins
Honey’s Greatest Gift
Like most families with a dog, we loved our yellow Lab and treasured the gifts she brought into our lives. From the time she joined our family at the age of seven weeks, Honey enlivened our household with her boundless enthusiasm, happiness and love. Her powerful “helicopter” tail wagged in a circle; she loved to play hide-and-seek with us and readily allowed visiting children to crawl all over her—and to play with her tennis balls and squeaky toys.
When our oldest son, Josh, began kindergarten, our youngest son, Daniel, found an eager playmate in Honey. When Daniel began school, she became my companion, often sitting next to me, head resting on my lap as I did paperwork for our fledgling business. But it was her companionship with my mother that led to what was, perhaps, her greatest gift.
Growing up in Germany, Mom’s life had been difficult. A stern older couple adopted her when she was about three years old. At sixteen, the town she lived in, Wuerzburg, was leveled during a World War II air strike. She fled from town to town on her own, trying to survive and suffering repeated rejections by people who could have helped her, but instead looked after their own interests. Then she married my father, an American soldier. Their marriage was not a happy one, and Mom struggled in her role as a mother of four. Between my mother’s unhappiness and my father’s quiet and distant nature, there wasn’t a lot of emotional nurturing in our family.
When Mom—a wid
ow—moved to our city as a senior citizen, I was concerned. Would we relate? Could I deal with the emotional distance between us? To top it off, once again Mom felt lonely and displaced. In an effort to ease her loneliness, Mom often drove the mile to our house to walk Honey. They were perfect for each other. Mom walked slowly, and by this time, so did Honey, also a senior citizen. Together they explored the trails that interlace our neighborhood. The gentle yellow dog brought out a softness in Mom. My mother babied Honey, sometimes sneaking her forbidden foods despite my protests. Although I considered Honey a family member, to me she was still a dog, but to Mom she was nearly human; as a result, we occasionally clashed over our differing “dog-parenting” styles.
It was about a year after Mom’s arrival that my husband, Steve, and I knew Honey’s end was near. Honey, now fourteen, could no longer curl up to sleep. Her joints were stiff, and though we gave her daily anti-inflammatory drugs, we suspected she continued to suffer. But we didn’t have the heart to put her to sleep. In spite of her physical ailments, Honey still fetched the paper daily and turned into a puppy at the prospect of a walk. Her enthusiasm for life masked what should have been obvious.
Then one sunny Tuesday in March, I finally understood that our stoic pet had had enough. She was clearly suffering, and I knew it was time. Before I could change my mind about doing what we had put off for too long, I called the vet. They made arrangements for Honey’s favorite veterinarian, Dr. Jane, to come in on her day off. Steve met me at the vet’s office and together we comforted Honey as she slipped away from this world.
Her loss affected me far more than I could have imagined. I moped around the house, restless and overcome by sudden bursts of tears. My grieving was heightened by the fact that just a few months before we had also become empty nesters. Without Honey to fill her customary space in our kitchen, our house now seemed bigger and emptier than before.