EPILOGUE

 

“Tucker! Bring that back!”

Our black Lab puppy runs out of the garage and across the driveway with one of my favorite house slippers. He flies across the yard and goes down the steep bank. I’ll never see that slipper again. He’s chewed up everything he can get his sharp little teeth on, so I have no hope my slipper will meet a kinder fate.

David drives up and sees me standing there with my hands on my hips, exasperation written all over my face.

But I smile when he gets out of the car and puts his arm around my shoulder and reminds me I deliberately chose the feistiest puppy from the litter.

I had no idea what I was getting into. All of our dogs were already past puppyhood when we brought them home, but I had always said I wanted to raise a puppy into a dog.

We brought Tucker home when he was only eight weeks old. What a precious bundle of fur he was. Nick didn’t get to spend very much time with Tucker, though it was our intention to bring him in to revive Nick’s spirits.

When Dad passed, we were afraid Nick would go immediately after because he seemed to have just given up on life. Marcy stayed with Nick for the five days it took us to go to Florida and bury Dad next to Mother. I had stood by the gravesite with my family and listened to the soloist sing the beautiful hymn, “I’ll Fly Away,” which was Dad’s favorite. I had smiled throughout the song. Others were in tears, but mine were already shed, and I allowed that Dad had indeed flown away and was where he belonged for eternity—with Mother.

While we were gone, I worried every day that Marcy would call and tell me Dr. Froman was coming over to put him to sleep. Marcy had been instructed to call the vet’s office each day to give her an update on his status so that Dr. Froman would know when it was time to ease Nick out of our world.

I was filled with guilt and a different kind of grief to think he would pass away without David and me at his side. But I trusted that the talk I’d had with Nick the night before we left assured him we would be coming back to him. I asked him to wait for us. I believed with all my heart he understood because he was indeed waiting for us when we returned. I ran into Dad’s apartment as soon as we pulled into the garage and was beyond happy to see him lying on his bed with a welcoming smile and wagging tail.

I’d nestled with him and poured out words of love until he fell asleep.

The day after we had returned from Florida, I got a call from the shelter manager, Angie, telling me someone had just dropped off a litter of four black Lab puppies. Was I interested in adopting one?

I was and I wasn’t, but I had read somewhere that if you want to keep an old dog young, get a puppy. We adopted one of the puppies that very afternoon.

Though Nick’s afflictions plagued him, he perked up when puppy Tucker pounced on him and started chewing on his ears as he lay on his bed in Dad’s apartment. Nick spent all of his time there now. He seemed to find solace in that space.

He was an old dog to be teaching our new puppy any manners, but it didn’t take long for him to establish a few rules, via a sharp bark, when puppy Tucker got too rough, chewed on something he shouldn’t, or had an accident on the carpet.

Two short weeks after Tucker joined our family, we had to say goodbye to Nick. Dr. Froman came to our home in the early evening. We gathered in Dad’s apartment, where Tucker joined us for a sweet but terribly sad love fest before she administered the two shots that put Nick to sleep and took him away from us forever. David and I held Nick, and we wept tears of profound loss for the second time in a month as we watched the light in his eyes go dark. David gently laid him on Dad’s bed, wrapped in Dad’s comforter, which had become Nick’s after Dad was gone.

On many days throughout the summer, we hiked with Tucker up to Nick’s favorite place, the creek. Just as we had with Rocky, we’d scattered his ashes in the shallow pools and deep wells of the creek, which feeds into the beautiful Swannanoa River. Tucker splashed around with unfettered joy, and each and every time I pictured our big boy doing the same. As I often did with Nick, I joined Tucker in the creek and allowed myself to be soaked from head to toe from his splashing and shaking.

It’s now early September, and those harbingers of autumn—the cooler breezes and chillier nights—are upon us.

I call Tucker, but he doesn’t respond to my calls other than to let out a yip from down in the valley now and then. David and I settle into the chairs on the bank with a glass of wine, anticipating the sunset and Tucker’s return.

My mind goes back to this time last year . . .

David interrupts my reminiscing when he says, “There he is.” Tucker’s head comes into view as he climbs the steep bank to join us.

“What does he have in his mouth?” I ask David.

“I can’t tell.” David verbally encourages Tucker as he pulls his strong, young body the rest of the way up the bank to join us and proudly show us what he has found.

It’s Dad’s 82nd Airborne cap, the one that had blown off his head last autumn and seemingly disappeared. It’s covered in dirt and grass stains, and I wonder how it survived the winter weather and the gusty spring winds.

I reach for it, but Tucker dances away from me, taunting me. David laughs and says, “I’ll get it from him.”

As he reaches out to snag it from Tucker, I put my hand on his arm to stop him. He looks at me quizzically as I smile and shake my head.

“I think Dad would want him to have it, don’t you?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE END