Farewell to a Friend

There's one scene from the movie I Am Legend that I still know by name.

In most DVDs, you can go to the scene selection and find that the scenes of the movie are either numbered or titled. In this movie, they opted for titles instead of numbers. That was one of the reasons that this scene has stuck in my mind for so long, after seeing the movie so long ago. The second reason is that it is widely considered to be the saddest scene in the whole movie. The third is that it reflected a loss, one of the only losses that I knew for sure was going to enter into my life, right from the time that I met her.

"Farewell to a Friend" was the title of the scene where the main character, Robert Neville, has only a tiny, fleeting chance to save his best and only remaining friend - his dog. His dog, Sam, had been bitten by some infected zombie-like dogs, and there were only two things that would happen if he couldn't cure her: she would die, or she would become an infected zombie-dog herself and he would have to kill her anyways. In his heart, I think that he knew that the chances of saving his beloved companion were next to none, so in Sam's final moments he held her close. Then, you don't see it, but he had to strangle her to keep her from attacking him. I think he also did it to ease her final moments of life.

When she does breathe out her final breath, when life leaves her body... you can see the pain on the face of her friend. The truth of what happened was that he did all that he could to keep her safe and well, but in the end she had to die, and he had to be the one to bring death to her. The truth, then, was that it wasn't his fault. He probably didn't see it that way, though. He probably blamed himself about that for a while, if not the completely random injustice of the world. And I'm sure that either way it hurt the whole time.

...I kind of feel the same way.

My best friend who is on the earth right now is a yellow Labrador retriever. Her full given name is Tasha Holly Harriet [surname]. As I am writing this right now on May 15th, 2012, she is experiencing her final day of life. In order to ease her pain, she needs to leave this life, and we need to be the ones to do it.





My friend named Tasha first came into my life on December 3rd, 2001. My mom had been wandering around the SPCA on December 1st, and after looking around at some of the stray dogs, she found a yellow labrador with a gentle temperament who seemed so happy to see someone visit her. The dog was then being nicknamed by the staff as "Nel." I don't know the story behind that. Maybe in animal shelters, names get rotated. Maybe staff members give them names based on others that they know. Whatever the case, that was how my family met her. Nel, the stray dog with an unidentifiable tattoo in her ear. December 3rd, my mom asked my siblings and I if we wanted to go down to the SPCA and look at a dog, because we might be bringing her home with us. Were we excited? Insanely so!

For me in particular, the news of potentially bringing home another friend, another family member was one of the best things that I could hear. I say that it was of special interest to me because I was twelve years old and going through my first year of a school that was, to all intents and purposes, a military school. To this day I'm still not sure if it was even considered to be part of the public school system or not. All I knew was that they were strict, punishments were harsh, and that they required us to learn military drill and other things that no other school around would require of us. In my young eyes, I felt like I knew what was the story of most of the kids my age: they must have been told to "straighten out or go to boot camp," and then found that it was no joke. I'd never seen so many juvenile delinquents at such a young age, so many promising career criminals who were barely even going through puberty. As for me, inexperienced as I was, I still believed that most people thought of being a soldier as a noble calling, a sacrifice for the country that they loved, a necessary service to help protect sovereignty of our own nation and the nations of others. It turns out, that was just me.
I quickly found out that my ideas and I weren't welcome in that kind of world. I like to think that even at a young age, I still had conviction in what was wrong and what was right, and that I wouldn't back down from that conviction. Well, my peers didn't like that. They figured that the sole Latter-day Saint kid was good for target practice, because he was the one that showed promise not to hit back. In all honesty, I was hated. Not even the so-called "uncool" people wanted me around; I was too low even for them. It was the first period of my life where I could go for full days of not speaking to anybody. It was the first time when I found something to be hurt about and nobody to turn to when times got rough. It was the first time that I knew what it was like to be harassed and beaten up and not to have any certain place to turn.

Three months into a life like that, I met this dog nicknamed Nel. Those shining brown eyes, that wagging tail, and that genuine doggy grin instantly won over everybody. It was her who introduced me to the way that dogs hug; for all of the times that I had encountered and lived around dogs before, I had only briefly had time to pet them or back away before they tried to bite off a piece of me. I hadn't had the time to find out that they rub their heads across their loved ones, because they don't have arms to reach out. The first time she gave me one of those is still one of the best hugs that I've ever received in my life.

The staff worker showing us this dog Nel told us about her. She was a stray who had been picked up from the side of a highway, and upon inspection they found that she had a green-ink tattoo on the inside of her ear. It was a serial number, which led them to think that maybe she had escaped or been stolen from a breeder. They couldn't tell for sure what the first number was, though. So, they searched various different codes in different breeder databases across Edmonton and Calgary but didn't find anything. They gave up on finding her original owners and placed her up for adoption, which is where we found her and decided to take her home.

I'm not sure what made my parents feel that the time was right for us to have an animal living with us. We'd taken care of cats for a neighbour, once. We had temporarily taken in another stray that we named Lucky, before giving her up to a lady who had other dogs - that experience hadn't gone well. Yet only a few years later, here we were, taking in another. What was the story behind this one?
I still don't have an official answer, but I put my faith in the answer being divine providence. Someone knew that I was having a tough time of life and that it was only going to get tougher, and so I was sent a faithful friend who walked on four legs, sniffed people's scents when they said hello, and whose madly wagging tail used to be like a whip. That was the dog who became my best friend and had been for just over a decade.

She was more to me than just a furry creature who walked on four legs, who devoured everything conceivably edible that she could get into her mouth, whose breath could sometimes make you gag, and whose erratic sleeping patterns sometimes made it hard to keep her in your room for the night. She was more to me than a quirky "almost person" who loved to swim but hated baths, more than a furry welcoming party who would give me a soggy tennis ball whenever I got home from school, more than this funny little animal who liked having her ears rubbed and who would emit a happy "moo" sound of contentment whenever she got someone to rub her ears.

I say that she was my best friend, and I hope that some of you will understand when I say that in many respects, she remains the only friend I have ever really had.

Tasha has been a significant part of my life, and to the lives of more than just me, I'm sure. Her first name is an acronym; the initials of us children who were living at home at the time that we got her were A, T, A, and S. Since TASA doesn't quite sound right, we transliterated it to make it TASHA, so that the sound was smoother. In a way, she was like her name suggests - the culmination of all of us. She was the final "sibling" in some ways, a new baby that took part in our family and completed things, almost like things were intended to include her.

Tasha has been my partner in exploring vistas and venues that nobody else has ever wanted to join me in. While she was sniffing out animal trails in the field and wooded area behind my house, I was out there beside her, seeing what I could see and discerning alongside her what kinds of stories had taken place in that field that up until recently was inhabited by nobody but the animals. That open grassland and tiny forest have now been desecrated and destroyed; the moose set off to search for happier lands, the coyotes ran for better cover in which to raise their cubs, even the Canada geese won't touch the barren land that is left. Tasha and I were some of the most consistent and probably final explorers of the little land that we had left outside of mankind's world, and we loved that place. We even loved it as developers started to cut a scar that was called the Anthony Henday Highway through the landscape, as sewer lines started to materialize and mounds of displaced earth formed all over the place. I don't know another friend besides Tasha who would have been so willing to wander around with me in the wonder of Canadian wilderness as it met its demise... fitting that as that land disappears, so will she...

Tasha has been one of my closest confidants. If you want someone who will truly listen, then you should find someone who has much to say and yet rarely speaks. It may surprise you to know, but Tasha was one of those souls. As I sit beside her right now, she is quietly listening to things around her. She has stories that she has accumulated from her knowledge of the scents that carpet the kitchen and living room floor. She has smelt entire sagas from the journeys of animals and people who have walked the paths that we have shared. And in spite of what science wants to say is definitive, these beasts are more intelligent than they are letting on. She has thoughts of her own, and yet she will listen to my thoughts, spoken or otherwise expressed. I can tell her how I am feeling, and she understands. No matter what I tell her I have done, she reminds me that she still cares.

Yet Tasha has wisdom that is rare among my human counterparts: if I am not in the right, she knows it and expresses displeasure with me. She can tell when someone is not trustworthy and not righteous, and though she still loves someone in that state of being, she will not seek out that person or be willingly close to them. Like Superman and other archetypal characters, she almost always knows what is wrong and what is right, and she will follow those things as best she can. With the rare exception of eating something that she has been told not to, and the even rarer exception of sleeping on the couch (she has never forgotten the lecture she got for that - my mom repeating, "Tasha... no couch!" and banging together two rubber-soled shoes), Tasha would always do what she thought or knew to be right. She has been an example to me in ways that few others around me have been able to mimic.

Tasha has been a comfort to keep nearby, in good times and in bad. I have found that many of my "friends" in life are conditional; we could be considered friends when they are in need, or if they felt morally obligated to help the friendless boy, or if there was simply no one else to talk to or do things with during that moment of time. Tasha, on the other hand, loved to go places and do things with me. Whenever I asked her the magic question, "Do you want to go for a walk?" she would start prancing and leaping around excitedly and her eyes would light up with excitement. I knew that much of the excitement was that she was going outside into her natural element to see and smell new things, but it was more than that, too. She was happy to have the time to be with me. It was never an inconvenience to her when I asked to spend any time with her. I could wake her up in the middle of a nap - not that I often did that on purpose - and she would still be excited that I was there. She trusted me in her bad times, like when I had to wash mud off of her (one of her most humiliating moments, in her eyes) or help patch up cuts in her paws, and she enjoyed being with me in her happiest times. When given the choice of meeting new people, at times she would come back to me, give me one of her dog hugs, and lean next to me for nothing more than quality time spent silently together. I don't absolutely agree with one of those clichés about how true love makes silence comfortable, but Tasha has shown me better than almost everyone that some of the purest and most intimate moments don't require words. Not all, but some of the strongest messages that communicate "I love you" are said with nothing more than thought or touch. That's one of the most powerful things that this domesticated wolf has taught me.

I want to go on and relive the memories... over the past decade she has been there and taken place in so much and endeared herself like most of her human counterparts have never tried.
So, right now I want to recall those past moments; while she is still alive and  breathing, while her heart still beats and her stomach still gurgles, while her fur still carries that distinct smell that is Tasha... I want to remember her, so that she can know, as she sits beside me for the last night, how much she has meant to me.

Hear this, Tash?

...Good girl.

I remember how she gained her two middle names. First came "Holly," during her first month living with us. We recognized that she was our Christmas puppy who came a few weeks early, and thought that we would commemorate that fact with a Christmas name to be affixed to her. Her other middle name, "Harriet" was meant as a joke; we often called her a hairy dog, a hairy puppy or mutt, even a hairy oaf, as a term of endearment. Then she somehow got called a hairy "it," and we noticed that "hairy it" is someone's name - though we normally spell it "Harriet." So, why not? Heh... it's not every friend whose nickname you are able to implant into her real given name. I'll remember that in years before I have to name children, I helped to name my dog.

I remember how we first got her used to the great outdoors. We didn't let her run free, at first, until we knew that we could trust her to respond to her name and to obey commands. So we started with a long tether made out of a combination of a simple leash and some nylon cord. The first time I held her by that, I gripped the leash more tightly than I ever had to any kite or balloon; what was tied to the other end of this rope was more precious to me than a piece of rubber filled with helium, or a thin piece of fabric stretched across a simple frame. This was my friend, and it was my responsibility to hold her and keep her safe. Of course, I remember that she and I played fetch like that, and that one time neither of us had been willing to let go of our end of the rope, so as she ran at full speed she formed a perfect trip wire and knocked over my youngest brother. That was kind of funny, but you're still a rude dog.

I remember the time I found out how powerful her tail could be, for the first time. I was sitting on the floor beside her, though I think I had turned to watch the TV screen for something. Right as she stood up beside me, my dad came home, and as she started to wag her tail, she hit me in the face and nearly broke my nose. Well... at least someone was happy. I suppose I deserved it, after I once accidentally snapped an elastic toy on her eye. (We learned not to play tug-of-war with that one again.)

I remember how Tasha was scared of big, deep noises. Once when a hot air balloon flew way too low and barely cleared the roof of our house, that was the only time in her life that Tasha ran away. Fortunately she had been wearing her collar and someone found her a few blocks away, then returned her to us. The same fear of loud noises made her scared when people laughed too loudly, when the fire hydrant was opened, or whenever she heard peals of thunder. I'll always remember the one day when she and I were the only two in the house, and when we heard the first clap of thunder, I knew that she was about to come running down the stairs to me. I was right, and she stopped as close as she possibly could to me and sat down right on me, her heart beating frantically. I guess she was the one who taught me to comfort others who stood in need of comfort.

I remember that Tasha entered into my life during a simpler era, where having dial-up Internet was not only credible, but a new thing, when the Nintendo 64 and the Sony PlayStation were still relevant and relatively new, and as far as I knew MP3 players weren't all that important. I don't think there even was such a thing as an iPod. If there was, I didn't know about it and didn't care. Now, since there weren't so many virtual world distractions, there weren't a lot of things for a friendless kid to do, were there? I thank Tasha for the fact that she kept me interested in the real, natural world, got me to keep on exploring and enjoying the beauty of life along the way. In fact, I should accredit her for the fact that I now carry a camera with me everywhere, and that my photos are of some of the strangest and yet still beautiful things that I encounter in day-to-day life. I learned the attitude while spending time with my quadruped canine friend who revelled in the beauty of creation and life whenever and wherever she could.

I remember how she loved to play fetch, but how she would rarely bring the thrown object all the way back to the person who had thrown it. She would bring it part of the way, then apparently lose interest and then drop it. One might assume that she had lost interest, but if you ever walked over to the thing she had dropped and picked it up, she would look at you with excitement and prepare to run wherever you threw it. It wasn't boredom, stupidity, or lack of devotion, I've decided. She was just teaching an object lesson through her actions: if you want teamwork to work, then you have to put something into it yourself, rather than expect a teammate to do it for you. Besides, shouldn't you keep the game moving somewhere, rather than going in meaningless circles? Tasha, you have often been unwittingly very wise.

I remember how she used to make unexpected swimming trips, no matter how hard you might have tried to prevent them from happening. She proved to us that she was strong enough to swim through the North Saskatchewan's current, that she was healthy enough to swim in and drink the water from man-made Valencia Lake, and not against jumping into a slough filled with meltwater in early spring. It may have made her smell funny afterwards and have given her a tired tail, but seeing how happy it made her was worth it.

I remember how much she used to love getting tummy rubs. Whenever she decided that she was in a mood to be petted she would respond to it by rolling herself over onto her back and staying there. Sometimes, if you did it for long enough and she enjoyed it enough she would fall asleep in some of the most bizarre positions, almost like she was intending to pose for a sculptor. Then she would wake up and apparently wonder why she was in that position. Heh, you were always a funny one. Now, it's been too hard for her to get her body rolled over, especially because she has these large lumps on a few places on her underside, which don't make it easy to lie down, let alone roll over.

I remember also how she learned to do a lot of tricks, but would almost never do them unless she knew that you would give her food. She was clever when the need arose. She learned to shake a paw, and from the way that she normally offered her left paw first I assumed that she was the only other lefty in the house. She learned to roll over, but sometimes in her mind she would get confused, forget to lie down first, and instead spun in a circle. I tried working with that, and experimented with the word "pirouette!" while making the hand motion, but I don't know that she fully understood that one. For all the intelligence she exhibited, bilingualism wasn't her strong point.

She did learn to jump on cue, speak (normally requiring a few practice runs), go from sitting up to laying down and vice versa, and how to do a trick called "nose." You could put something edible on her snout and tell her to stay. If you had placed it correctly and her aim was good, you could tell her "ok" and she would snatch it out of the air and eat it before you even noticed it had moved. She got good at developing her talents.

I remember how she loved to sing. My brother found it out by accident, one morning, that Tasha loved the sound of a harmonica, and that if you played something that sounded like a dog's howl or a song with long-sustained notes, she would open her throat, raise her head high, and let out a howl that she had never otherwise let out. I don't know if it was just me, but that was a beautiful sound. Like I said, she developed her talents well. And you know something? She has influenced me because of that. I didn't consciously think it at the time, but she was a driving force in me starting to sing again and in choosing to learn how to play the harmonica. In sharing her talents, she got me to share mine.

I remember how she tried so hard at a game that we would try with her: we would take small pieces of dog treats or carrots or apples (some of her favourite foods in the world) and place them all over a room while we told her to wait in the next room. Then we would tell her "ok" and leave her to search for all the pieces. Sometimes she would instantly find the place, sometimes her nose would literally swoop right over pieces, but she was always determined to do it. She may not have been a good tracker or retriever - the purposes for which Labrador retrievers were originally bred - but she did the best that she knew how. Besides, it was satisfying for me to see her finally achieve her goal and end up with a mouthful of carrot.

I remember how she would use her tail for so many things, by accident of her little quirks. Sometimes she would stand in place and wag her tail for happiness, and hit walls or other objects loudly enough to make them drum. My mom came up with the joke, when Tasha's tail repeatedly hit the piano, that Tash was playing the piano. Sometimes Tasha would sit and wag her tail, and we said that she must have been sweeping the floor for us. Sometimes she would be laying down, or even asleep, and her tail would seemingly involuntarily wag once and thump the ground. It was weird, but the quirks that Tasha never attempted to hide were what made her unique. She never had to play up how weird she was, nor try to conceal it; she was who she was, and that was endearing enough.

I remember how she used to come get me, early in the morning. There was no better alarm in the morning than a wiggling, 60 lbs. dog that reflected sunlight, who had a cold and wet nose and noisy, smelly breath, who loved to jump on you and sniff at you until you woke up, because she was so excited to spend more time with you again. I remember how patient she was, in spite of that, and how some mornings she chose instead to jump beside me on my bed, lay down, and take a nap with me. There was even a morning that I sat up, saw her at the foot of my bed, leaned over to say hi to her, and accidentally fell asleep. Her legs used to be perfect to use as pillows. She never complained or tried to move; that ever-patient and loving dog would take far more than that if it was for me or another member of her family. And besides, time spent with family was time spent with them, whether they were awake to realize that or not.

I remember the genuinely sad look that would show on her face, the disappointment that showed whenever she was left behind somewhere. Even if it was in a new place that she liked to be in, like our grandparents' house where she got to eat more treats and table scraps than normal, Tasha still expressed disappointment and longing for her family whenever we left her behind. She was unbelievably loyal; she could go for weeks without seeing some of us, if my brothers and I happened to be at camp or out of the province, or be it what may, yet when we showed up she couldn't be contained from leaping for joy and greeting everyone as soon as physically possible. In fact... well, let me get to that.

I remember how she looked and how she acted when I was preparing to leave for two years to be a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She could sense that something was happening, and she knew even before I talked to her about it that I was going to leave and not be around. I was worried that I was never going to see her again; we'd projected at the time that she likely wouldn't be alive at the end of 2010, so my absence from 2008 until two years hence was likely to put me in a strange land while she passed on. Tasha is very empathetic, so she understood my need to hug her close or give her extra back scratches and tummy rubs, and she understood the underlying sadness to everything that happened between her and me. No other friend would have been as quick to respond to what I was feeling.

As it so happened on the morning that I left, I kissed her on the head, whispered that she should wait "two winters, puppy," and then walked out. But when we got to the airport there were some problems that kept me from getting onto my scheduled flight, so my family drove me home until the next available flight would take me. I got home and needed to sleep for a while, as I had only slept about three hours in the night before. Tasha found out that I was home, and she leapt onto my bed with joy, ecstatic as usual that she got to see me again. It hurt when I thought that she thought I was staying after all. I didn't want to see the expression in her face when I left her a second time. It made it harder than leaving any other member of my family, because I didn't know if she would be there when I got back. But she was a brave dog, and she understood what needed to be done, and she stood by her self-proclaimed duty to the rest of our family. I'm never going to forget the love and devotion of this blonde dog.

It also happened that she was still around when I got home in September 2010. She was friendly and happy to see me at first, though my mom said there was a chance she wouldn't remember me; how long do dogs' memories last? Well... longer than we would think, I'm sure. It took her a couple of hours, but I noticed a moment when she sniffed my hand instead of my clothes, and I could see a moment of recognition in her dog brain. Her eyes sparkled a little more and she remembered who I was - her old friend who had taken her on walks and to venture through what bush there was around, the one who had scratched her back and rubbed her tummy and learned to "moo" her ears. I was home, and we were back together again. I think she was as happy as I was to realize that truth. I was happy enough that, while she was staying in my room, I didn't mind at all when she woke up in the middle of the night to lick herself rather noisily, or when she woke up early, saw me stirring, and assumed that I was ready to start the day at 5:00 AM, so tried to wake me up and greet me. Those were only tiny little disturbances, and one of them was with the intent of showing she loved me. What was there to be mad about that?

Tasha has been with me through those things and more. She has survived the brunt of every trial that sweeps over her or me, and still maintained the sunny attitude, unfailing optimism, unmitigated happiness, unconditional love, everything that makes her a dog, and everything that makes her Tasha. She has understood how I felt during military school, junior high, high school, full-time work, full-time absence from her life, and post-secondary school. She has been there to comfort me on the days where I felt like breaking down and crying because I was stressed or because I felt like I had no friends or because I actually didn't have any other friends. She has abated my loneliness, tempered my anger in my worst moments, and uplifted my happiest times. She is a true friend, one that I've been glad to have accompany me during these past ten years. I'm grateful that she has been here to bless my life.

I've thought about it, over these years, how I would inevitably need to say good-bye to my friend Tasha. The relationship that we develop with dogs is unique in a lot of different ways. One of them is the fact that we know how short of a time we will have them around. Parents and children tend to live together for more or less two decades, and still see and communicate with each other afterwards, in most cases. Significant others, if we so choose, often stay with us for life. And, though most people don't believe me in this, you can have them for longer than just life. I'll have to get back to my explanation on that. Anyways, most friendships and other relationships last for a long time, if they are significant. With a dog, though, you can form one of the deepest and most loving bonds with one, and yet you will know that the dog's lifespan is a lot shorter than your own. You will know, from the beginning, that you will need to watch that friend depart from life someday. It sort of seems cruel to think that you can come so close to someone and then watch them be ripped from you only some years down the road.

I think that the Lord did that on purpose. (If you're going to get offended by listening to me talk about God or any related things, you can stop reading here.) I think that He created the dog with such a short lifespan because He knew what we would learn from this unique relationship. We would learn how it feels to intensely love another living soul and yet let go of that precious relationship. We would learn how to sacrifice even someone that we loved so much. A very wise and inspired man once said that no religion which does not require of its people the sacrifice of all things can produce the faith necessary to live with God. To live with God, we have to prove that we are willing to become like Him. He is willing to make precious, dear sacrifices of things that He loves. There is no one that He loves more than His children, and among all of those none more than the Only Begotten... yet what did He do with that Begotten Son? I'm sure you've heard John 3:16 at some point or another: "For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whoso should believe in his name should not perish, but have everlasting life." See that? That's the sacrifice of all things. That's what He does, and so that's what we need to learn how to do.

It may have been scripture that told me that, but it will be my best and sometimes only friend Tasha who teaches me that, tomorrow.

***

Right now she is having one of her running dreams, and I think she's chasing something at the speed that she used to have as a puppy. Her lips and her eyes are moving, so I think this must be a hunt. I'm kind of glad to see that she still has these dreams. And in a way, I guess I'm happy to know that tomorrow these dreams will become reality to her again. She'll be free from this broken, dying body that prevent her from doing what dogs do... and what's to keep her from running free, prancing and chasing to her heart's content?

To me, it's an enormous comfort to know that life doesn't begin at birth or end at mortal death. I've gained a lot of skeptics over the years who waste no time in telling me that religious people conjure up these imaginary places called afterlife because we are scared of oblivion and can't stand the harsh "reality" that someday there will be nothing left and that all our intelligence, all that we work for will someday disappear, and that when a loved one passes on that's it. There's nothing more to it than this.

...And they say that I'm in denial?

It's another story about how I came to know it, but I know that eternal life is no lie. The perpetuation of spirits living after they leave their bodies, the concept of resurrection, the potential to live with God the Father and become like Him, those are no unreal truths. I know those things, and no matter how much people may rage against me and try to prove to me what I do and don't know, the knowledge can't be taken away. This century or less that we live here isn't all there is to life, and I'm grateful that that is the case.

It means, among other things, that I'm going to see my best friend again, and that tomorrow, we're not condemning her to oblivion and non-existence. All we are doing is sending her away on the next leg of her journey, where she will not be in such constant pain and physical disability. As I told her, earlier today, she's going to have souls to meet again. She'll have to say hi to our deceased grandfather, with whom she was good friends; to all of her family that have passed on, which I'm pretty sure includes her parents at least; she'll probably see Lucky there, and have someone to go on adventures with; and who is to say that she's not going to find some lonely person who could use a friendly ear, both for listening and for scratching?

This isn't the end. I'm going to miss my friend, yes, and I will feel for a very long time that she is irreplaceable, that nobody could ever demonstrate the same loving-kindness that she has, that nobody will ever fill the void that she leaves, in quite the same way. And you know, maybe nobody ever will do exactly what she has. But that's ok. For all of the people and animals who pass out of this life, somehow life goes on for the rest of us. No matter how much I lose, somehow I find that I am given the opportunity to gain more. And in the end, when all is finished, I know that I'll have a certain blonde dog that I want to give a hug to, once life is done. I'll have a lot to tell her about, I'm sure, and maybe she'll once again sit by me and listen, communicating her sympathy without a single word. Then I think we'll have to go chase down some gophers, or something.

Until then... Tasha, I love you. Don't forget that anytime over the next 80 years, ok? And if I ever do own a cat, please don't get too mad at me. Trust me, no cat will ever be able to parallel you. (Ok, maybe our sister's kitten Oscar Wilde could come close...)

You've been a wonderful, valiant companion to have along for this stretch of the journey. Thank you for teaching me so much, for being so much fun, for all of the love that you gave in return for the occasional pat on the head and meals in the morning and evening. You've been a friend when things were bleak and when they were radiant. It's not going to be the same without you.

In short, you've been a good dog.

Have a good sleep now; I'll see you in the morning, and then... well... it will be a while until next time, after that.

One last hug?

Thanks. Love you too, Tasha. Be a good girl until next time.

...Bye, dogger.

Con amor,
TAB III