My car’s cheap CD player is on repeat playing track 9, Bob Dylan singing “Tomorrow Night” during my hour long commute to a job not suitable for a 58 yr old man. Returning home the same tune plays just short of distortion, a funeral dirge for Wessie.
“Tomorrow night. . . will it just be another memory,
Or just another song, that’s in my heart to linger on?”
Selfishly clinging to hope that he can greet me just one more time, follow me to my bed and snuggle under my arm as I kick my work shoes off, I creep down the driveway. Before I reach the door, my 30 year old son breaks the suspense: “Wessie is dead!”
I get very emotional and follow my son to the back yard under the oaks, where he has been working with pick and shovel. I start swinging the pick at the red granite-like Texas clay that lies beneath the organic topsoil. I know these are not rocks, although they feel like it. “Dad, don’t do that! I’ll get it.” But I ignore my son as Wessie was my dog , too, and each strike at the unforgiving ground proves my love. Actually, Wessie was my wife’s dog. She is the one who squirted chicken broth down his forced-open throat after the vet wanted to end his life. She is the one who held him in her arms in the green metal 50’s style lawn chair the last two days of his life as his body temperature lowered even in the 100 degree Texas heat. But, it was my son who picked him, slept with him and needed him the most as a canine replacement for the wife he didn’t have and the friends he had left behind as our JWhood faded.
How true those Watchtower words of the early 90’s had been, saying in affect: “Many mature Christians “count the cost” with respect to the additional burden of the care and feeding of a pet. Realizing that such additional responsibilities could actually take time away from Theocratic service, they wisely avoid that commitment.”
But when we shattered our Theocratic future by harboring a DF’d son, we needed an advocate. Everyone else viewed us as scum, but Wessie, a supremely hyper black and tan miniature pinscher, saw the good in us and viewed everyone else as scum. Even Chester, the floppy black Labrador across the street was hated by Wessie. NO ONE penetrates this sacred yard! Wessie was a dog no one else could love, who loved only us. How privileged we were to know him.
For two weeks my car stereo has played one song and I have thought of one little boy. My wife’s weekly pill organizer is still full with a week’s medication. The gloom is like a lowered ceiling we all must bend under to walk around. The kitchen table is covered with the classified section of the Star Telegram, opened to the Pets page.
My wife writes the check out. The lanky man is grateful to find a home for one of his puppies and is sorry the black and tan one is already gone. My wife cups the 5 inch red dog in her hands like the precious life that it is.
Nothing has been replaced here. A real father is not happy with ten replacement children for the ten he has lost. A real father does not sacrifice his son, because a God suggests it. If he is that worshipful, he offers himself instead. Take my used up, tired body, Lord, but let my son live.
“Tomorrow night. Will you be with me when the moon is bright?
Tomorrow night. Will you say those lovely things you said tonight?”
TMS