Published: August 15, 2008 05:30 pm            

JAYSON LARSON: Sometimes it’s out of your hands

I had dreaded this moment for several weeks now. As I got out of my car in the driveway, I walked toward the door and then did a U-turn toward the mailbox back at the curb. The mailman doesn’t typically come this early — it was just shy of 11 a.m. — but I was willing to do anything to avoid the next few painful, and inevitable, minutes.

After checking the empty mailbox, I walked inside. There was my daughter, wearing the beautiful orange, white and yellow checkered sun dress made for her by Grammy. She ran to me as I walked in the door and gave me what she calls “huggies,” while my son continued to play a computer game and watch cartoons simultaneously. “Hey dad,” he flatly said as he practiced an eight-year-old version of multi-tasking.

I was about to break their hearts. I had to do it, and it made my stomach feel hot and heavy inside.

Later that day, the kids would be headed to Grammy’s house to spend a couple of nights before the end of the summer. Grammy’s house is a magical place. She has a “magical clock” that opens up in the back and reveals goodies left by some fairy that only grammies can dream up. The outside of her house, though seemingly typical to me, is a garden of mystery where my kids like to dig for worms and watch stray cats as if they were lions and tigers in the jungle.

One of the best things about visiting Grammy is Sammie, the child-like greyhound-lab mix who, when standing, is about as tall as me (like 5-8). She’s equally as likely to lean on you until you fall over as she is to lay on your feet and sleep for hours. When she would sleep on my feet during visits to my mother’s house, I would have liked to think that she was protecting me as much as she was making sure she would know if I were to try to move anywhere else in the house. Kind of like she needed me, too.

Sammie got heart worms and died suddenly two weeks ago, a few days short of our scheduled vacation to San Antonio. It seemed impossible that such a vibrant and strong creature could be gone so fast. She got sick a couple of weeks prior, had undergone treatment and then died shortly thereafter.

It left me numb. She was one of the family, having started her life with us before moving on to my sister’s house, and then to Grammy’s house. My son had never stopped feeling like Sammie was still his dog, his first and best dog, and that Grammy was merely her caretaker.

Every now and then, the kids — who knew she was sick — would ask about Sammie’s health in vague terms. In kind, we responded with vague answers as we tried to mask the terrible truth.

We didn’t have the heart to tell the kids, especially before vacation. The loss of a turtle or a bird over the years was hard enough. A cruel, heartless neighbor of my sister’s shot and killed my nephews’ dogs in the Kemp area several months ago, and my daughter cried all the way to her house when we told her. They weren’t ever her dogs, and yet she sobbed for the entire 25-minute trip.

This was going to hurt worse.

So we carried on with our vacation, putting in the back of our minds the miserable task of telling the kids about Sammie. We knew we were going to have to break the news at some point after getting back, and when the two-night trip to Grammy’s was decided last week, we now knew we had to break the news soon.

“Kids, come in here for a minute,” my wife called out, summoning both from the living room to our bedroom shortly after my arrival home.

They came in one after the other, and both were so excited about going to Grammy’s that neither was really paying any attention to us.

“We have something to tell you,” my wife continued, “and it’s not good news.” My son, at that moment, looked up cautiously from tinkering with his Transformers robot.

“It’s about Sammie,” I continued, and now a flushed look came across his face. With his mouth agape, his eyebrows shot toward his forehead and his eyes began to water. My daughter clinched her teeth, almost as if she were struggling with something.

Then the scene played out about like you would expect. My wife, the cornerstone of our family who has the kindest heart and the strongest resolve, explained that Sammie never got over being sick. She had died, she explained, and both children broke out into the most awful, blood-curdling cries you could imagine. They literally screamed bloody murder.

And me, well, I put my head down and cried, too, feeling embarrassed that my wife — who was crushed but successfully holding back her emotions — was left all alone to soothe the pain and cries of not two, but three kids. I wasn’t boo-hooing, but the tears flowed down my cheeks just the same. I just couldn’t help myself.

It was a day of growth for all of us. My kids, who think age 31 (my age) is an eternity away and who are so full of young life, learned that things that you love die.

I just wasn’t ready for them to find out that life here doesn’t last forever yet. I didn’t think it was time for that little innocent and naive part of them to wash away.

And so goes the lesson for me, once again: Life, to a certain extent, is out of my control.

This parenting stuff ain’t easy.

Jayson Larson is editor of the Athens Review.

        

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