Visit from a friend

[willard 0]

Had trouble sleeping last night, kept thinking of a dream from Saturday night. So I attacked the keyboard around 1:30 this morning and wrote it into a short essay. Thought some here might enjoy it.


"Misty"

Thoughts of her came to mind every now and again since that sad day so many years ago. Like other dogs in my life she was a faithful companion and trusted friend. Her breeding was mixed leaving her with a slight figure and fine facial features, not exactly what one looks for in a coon dog. She did ok in the woods but her real talent was holding down the couch so it didn’t run off while I was at work. Never an overeater she had full access to an open bag of dog food 24/7 but never carried an extra once on her small frame. And like those other dogs she had her bad habits, one of which was chasing rabbits and birds onto and across the road. It was this that led to her untimely demise in her prime. I remember the sounds more than the sights….the cackle of the pheasant as he flushed from the weeds near the house, the truck tires screeching, the thud…and her cries of pain. I ran to her as fast as I could, hoping that somehow she had escaped the full force of the impact, but she had not. Her body was bent and mangled in a way I wish I could forget, in a way that I knew her fate was sealed. She calmed as soon as I held her head in my hands but her suffering was all too obvious. I asked the driver to keep her calm as I went to get my rifle to do what had to be done. It’s never an easy task but, like so many things in our lives, I had no choice. Any attempt to get her to a vet would only intensify and prolong her agony, with the outcome being the same. I made sure I ended her suffering without adding to it, and then took to the task of laying her to rest in her favorite spot under the maple tree in the backyard.
I sat there for the rest of the evening talking to her, remembering the things we had done, hunts we had been on, and thinking of what could have been. I also apologized to her for not teaching her better the dangers of running onto the road, for not watching her more closely, and for not being able to help her. I spent a lot of that time trying to convince myself that I had done the right thing, the only thing that could be done, but I don’t think I ever fully accepted my reasoning. Not then, not since. Until now.
She came to see me last night. Not a ghost on a path or a fleeting glimpse of a dog that resembled her, but in a dream. It was one of those dreams that seem so real you could almost keep it locked in a box somewhere, available to have whenever you wanted it. I was sitting under her tree watching the birds at the feeder and the neighbor’s cattle cutting through my yard while on their grazing rounds. I had never had that problem in the real world but, being a dream, it seamed not out of place. She came to me from the edge of the field, her tail swaying to and fro in perfect rhythm with her long ears. I wasn’t startled at seeing her, it was if I had expected it. She came to me, pushed her nose into my cheek, and gave me a few wet dog kisses. I ran my hand across her head and down the length of her back, then scratched her ears the way she always liked. She lied down next to me with her head on my leg so I just stroked her head and scratched her ears, never saying a word. After a while she rolled over for a belly rub, another bit of attention she had always been fond of and received quite often.
As all dreams do this one also ended. She got up, shook the grass and dust from her coat, and stood looking into the distance. She turned to look at me, I could swear she smiled, walked back to the field she came from, and was gone. Her stay was much too short, but it would have been too short regardless of how long she had stayed in my dream. I don’t know why, after all these years, she would appear like that. I like to think it was because she wanted me to know that what I had done was ok, that I hadn’t done anything wrong. That somehow she had found a way to bridge that gap between our world and hers and was able to spend a few more minutes with me. But in the end it really doesn’t matter. She came to see me, and I’m grateful for the chance to see her one more time.