Writing Down the Bones – Card #4 of 60: What is Silent?

When Dad died, my brother and I wanted his sweet dog Kona to understand why he’d suddenly disappeared from her life.

It’s a lot.

It’s heavy.

I’m putting space between my words and the photo today in an intentional way so you have time to back out if you don’t want to go with me all the way to the truth. You can still jump off at the edge of it.

Here’s the bottom line: Dad wanted the story of Kona shared. People were asking. It was, without a doubt, his most painful part of his passing. He held a deep love for every dog he’d ever had, but none was more special than Kona.

Kona dropped into his life straight out of heaven. No one gets a pedigreed Schnoodle for free. But that’s what happened on a night when I was too sick to sleep in my own bed, so I took to the guest room so I wouldn’t keep my husband awake. I was scrolling Facebook and noticed in a Schnoodle page a post from a desperate owner who was going through a divorce and could not keep his dog. He was looking for a lifeline, and he found it in me. Dad had recently had to put down the last of the dogs he and our mother shared. Her final understandable words to him were, “You take care of these dogs.” That’s how it was, and Ken and I knew it the day we went home and saw that our framed photos had been replaced with pictures of Mulligan and Georgia Girl.

We get it. Dogs are much easier to love than even our own children.

I summoned my husband to drive me to Valdosta so I could pick up a dog. I tag teamed with my brother to deliver her to our father and gave him 48 hours to accept or reject her, with the full understanding I would take her back in a heartbeat. The truth: I came very close to keeping her and never giving him the option of keeping this joyful little sweet girl.

But when the man stepped out of his truck, a guidance counselor from a Florida high school meeting me halfway at the distance between us and in full tears, unable to say a word other than to hand me the pup and all her belongings, he was wearing a Florida State University t-shirt. My mother had gone to Florida State. It was a sign.

This free dog was being handed to our father by our mother, and I knew it.

Dad fell in love with Kona from the moment he saw her, but he toyed with us at first. On his deathbed, he declared her “the best gift ever.” He took her everywhere, including Winn Dixie, where he grocery shopped. If Kona didn’t go, he didn’t go – the exception being church. She knew when he put his good shoes on that she would have to stay, and she pouted in the chair as he readied himself.

Kona kept Dad going and bought him years beyond the usual. He bonded with dog park friends, who had their own section at his funeral. He held ceremonies in that dog park for departed pets.

Fast forward to the end.

I was expecting to welcome Kona into our fold with our three Schnoodles – Boo Radley, Fitz, and Ollie. But Dad flipped the script, calling his dog park friend Ann to the hospital as he was dying, introducing my brother and me to her, and explaining that Kona was to remain with Ann, who had told him that “as long as there is Kona, I will always have a piece of you.” Her husband, Andy, was good with that. Theirs was a unique friendship.

I respected and appreciated that Kona would stay with her tribe – the people and dogs and places she loves.

When we’d arrived back at the hospice facility after Dad died, they had him covered in a yellow blanket with a Bible verse embroidered on the corner. Ken asked if I had any ideas for that blanket, a gift from hospice. I suggested recycling it, but Ken said, “No, they’re proud of this. Let’s give it to Kona. It will hold his scent for her.”

He was right. We arranged for the new owner to bring Kona to the funeral home for a last visit with her master she’d loved so dearly. We wanted her to understand that Dad hadn’t abandoned her willfully – – that there was a reason he’d left, and it was beyond his control. We asked the funeral home not to launder the blanket – and after a quizzical look, we explained why.

Ann arrived with Kona, and my brother took her in for one last visit with Dad before he was buried. I’d love to post all of the photos I have so that you could see the progression of an excited dog checking out the owner she surely thought at first was asleep, but those photos probably violate every social media rule of respect for the dead. But the most telling one, I cropped. The eyes tell it all, if you choose to scroll and see.

This, my friends, is what is silent in response to the prompt card today: What is Silent?

(Please scroll down for the photo – which will show the story as Dad would have wanted folks to see and understand. Many have asked. Kona is in good hands. Kona will have a new family to help her through her grief. But she knows. She knows.)