18

We have all encountered death before, in some form or the other. Death can be a plague that wipes out our families, death can be simple and quiet and sneak in taking one and only one leaving us with an unusual distant hurt or death can be quick, a tug, a yank and everything is different from the absense of that which death desired to covet.

Do we convince ourselves that death is not our friend, when death sits with us everyday staring intently into our faces. He watches us devour the moments of our lives as he waits for the call to end the story elsewhere. Death is neither a friend nor foe...he just is. If you say that you have not seen death than you are a liar. Death has spoken to all of us in some form or fashion. Whether it is the spoken word upon the wind or if it is the music on the radio, death speaks and we hear it. Most of us tend to ignore death's call hoping that he will pass us by. Some of us see him as a dark form looming in the woods near our little country houses and we cower in fear. We do not recognize him as death, we see him as a predator, a killer and a thief of time. Some see death as time, come to rob us of what we have.

Death was to me, a simple therapist or councellor if you will. Things that were spoken by death were simple and that which I may have thought of myself as I grew older. I have no excuses for death or for my thoughts of myself. It is what it is and it cannot be changed. The years of my life were spent as they were and no alterations can be made to make the norm feel better.

If these strange facts and odd phases of my history disturb you, then you should detour now for it will not get any better. There are many other demons that yet have to make their appearances. And by the sidelines, death awaits, he will take as he pleases and if you listen, he will speak to you.




1982

Death and daddy's dogs

Daddy had about 28 dogs, hunting dogs, which he hunted with on a regular basis. He built enclosed houses for them as they were more than hunting dogs to him. The houses were surrounded by wire and located behind the house on the north side. Down a little path and a hill, they made their little doggy village home. I liked them and would walk down the trail to talk to them. I loved to go inside the wire cages and hold them, petting their soft fur. I also had two dogs that stayed in the yard in which i loved very much...even more so than the caged hunting dogs. Their names were Midnight and Gayra. Midnight was my brother's dog and Gayra was mine. I spend much of my time with those dogs and would get fleas from them. Moma would fuss when I came in scratching from the pests that I acquired from romping with my furry friends.

One summer, one of the dogs got very sick. We thought it was like any other cold and we thought that it would just go away on its own. The dog got worse and then two of the other dogs got very sick. As three or four of the others contracted the illness, the first dog died. The sickness spread, it spread so fast that as my father took them to the animal doctor, the other two died. Within two weeks most of my father's dogs were dead. I cried so much as I watched death take them all from my father. But nothing hurt so much as when death took my brother's dog and then Gayra from us. When the sickness was over, daddy had lost most of his dogs to a disease called Parvo. Apparently, the disease had bred inside the ground when the first dog got sick spreading illness throughout the pack of dogs.

Even though the pain was sharp, I did not look for death. I did not question his reasons because I did not want to talk to death. I wanted death to go away. I wanted this so desperately that I cried and cried at night, I wet my bed in frustration and fear and hatred and hurt.

I just wanted to sit outside on the porch by the rosebush where me and Gayra used to play. And, at dusk, i wandered down the little path and look into the empty dog cages.


Puffy

I had a cat named Puffy, she was white with spots,different colored spots like brown,black and gold. One day my father decided to put out poison for pests that were attacking our home. If I can remember correctly, it was to combat fleas. The poison was very potenant, so much so that when Puffy got it into her mouth, she became sick. It only took hours to paralyze Puffy from the poison. I watched her deteriorate and did not know what was wrong with her. Finally my father figured out that the poison that he put around the outside of the house was the culprit.

Father said that there was nothing that we could do, he did not take her to the doctor as he did some of the dogs he owned. We watched her lose her coordination and her meows got lower and more strained. After a while, she was quite. I crawled on my knees over to Puffy and looked into her eyes, she was still breathing. Her eyes moved but very slowly. Daddy said she was as good as dead and so he put her in a shoebox and dug a hole. DAddy buried Puffy while she was still breathing. I could not sleep all night thinking about Puffy in that cold lonely box.