Hi, it’s me. I have a confession to make… I have over a thousand pieces of Shitty First Draft essays written. I write all the time – at least I used to. For the last five or six years I haven’t put words to a page very often, but I’m still always writing. Every internal conversation I have with myself, I am writing. Every emotional hurdle I overcome, I’m writing about it. Every time I garden or drive a car or wash my dishes, I’m writing. My mind is constantly running tape, recording Shitty First Drafts that never make it onto a page.
It’s how I know I’m a Writer and not a writer. I’m never not writing.
Sharing my stories in this space each week has been a delightful discipline to get me back in the practice of putting words to paper (so to speak). Thank you for showing up to read them.
When I was about four or five months pregnant with Ruthie, we got a puppy. If someone tried to stop me from doing this, I don’t remember. If nobody tried to stop me, HOW DARE YOU. To be honest, this was probably one of those times when Bryan said, “It’ll be great!” and I just went with it. It’s a common dynamic in our relationship. Bryan is the ideas and adventure guy, and I’m the go-with-the-flow gal who’s up for anything. It works for us.
Scout was a Chesapeake Bay Retriever (or Chessie), born to friends of ours on September 11, 2002, on the one year anniversary of 9/11. Chessies are bird dogs, bred to retrieve a duck from a field or lake after getting shot down by a hunter. They have an oily coat that repels water and “soft mouth” that returns a bird to its hunter without mangling it. We’re not hunters, though we appreciate a dog who trains well. We trained Scout ourselves, and she was a good dog who obeyed commands and could be trusted off leash at the park or on the beach.
One day I realized I’d accidentally taught Scout a new command. Whenever Bryan came through the door after work, I would squeal “Daddy’s Home!” so the kids would rush him like youths to a punk rock mosh pit. Every time this happened, Scout would bark and rush the door with the kids. Eventually, I could say “Daddy’s Home!” at any time and she would run to the door barking. Even if Bryan was standing right next to me. Even if Bryan himself said the words. It was a fun party trick.
Both of our kids were born into Scout’s life, and they were her people. As toddlers they would play on her and tug at her face and drool on her, and if she’d had enough she simply got up and walked away. She never got into the trash or ate food off the counter or chewed my favorite shoes. Later we would get other dogs who did those things and I wondered if Scout was even a dog. Maybe she was my soul sister who supported me through childbirth, postpartum depression, and those feverish first years of parenting.
Scout got sick, and at the end of her life, she was surrounded by me and the kids all day as grew weaker. She passed away peacefully around 6pm one evening, just after Bryan came home from work. He walked in the door and bent down to give her a scratch behind the ears. She smiled and wagged her tail at him while he took off his backpack and coat. A few minutes later she was gone, as if she was waiting for him to come home one last time before she left us.
The evening she died, we were expecting dinner guests and didn’t have time to stop and grieve. We had to get a dead dog out of our living room! Bryan carried her downstairs to the basement home office and shut the door. After our guests left, we took the kids downstairs to say goodbye to Scout one last time – we cried, gave her pets, and told her we would miss her. Then, while I put the kids to bed, Bryan carefully wrapped her in a black plastic garbage bag and placed her on the bottom shelf of our upright freezer in the basement.
Wait, what?
Yeah. Like I wrote a couple weeks ago about my mom and step-dad dying, time doesn’t stop for us to mourn the dead. Bryan put Scout in the freezer because she died the evening before Thanksgiving Day, and we were expecting about 20 friends – some for dinner, and some later for dessert and board games. It was too late in the evening to figure out where to take her, and our veterinarian’s office was closed for the holiday weekend. So my stud husband handled it. The next day we had a full house, and I had a job to do that kept me busy from falling apart in my grief. Loved ones die, life goes on.
Between the two kids, Thomas inherited Bryan’s Hospitality Gene. Thomas loves to include people and make them feel welcome. When he tastes something good he wants to give everyone a bite. Saying “Cheers!” and clinking glasses together was one of the first motor skills he developed as a toddler. A few years ago when the final season of Game of Thrones premiered, he planned and prepared a themed watch party for all our friends, including a dramatic entrance down our long hallway while an audio file chanted, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” (If you know, you know).
On that Thanksgiving, the day after Scout died, Thomas was only three and a half years old. He greeted our guests at the door and asked them if they wanted to see our dog, Scout. Sure! They said, Of course we’ll see your dog!
And then he proceeded to lead them downstairs to the basement freezer, open the door, and pat the black plastic bag. “She’s here,” he’d say, patting the bag. “Here, you can touch it. It’s okay, it’s just her body.” Except he was only three years old and couldn’t say his Rs yet, so it was more like, “She’s hee-oh. It’s okay, it’s just hoh body.”
I have no recollection of how our friends responded to this weird kid and his dead frozen dog, but I was mesmerized. Kids have a funny way of showing us how to act without the overthinking that comes with adulthood. We tried to normalize the death experience for our kids, and Thomas reflected that experience outward. He was honoring Scout’s place in our lives, and it was comforting to see him invite the community into our grief. People Die. Life goes on. But we’re not alone in our grief.
Thanks for reading. Until next time,
Jen
Question of the Week
How has your go-to community been impact by the last couple years? What shifted, for better or worse, as a result of *gestures broadly at the world*?
I loved this story, thank you for writing it! And I am also never not writing, but rarely write it down. It feels always like too much and never enough. --time, skill, words, space, readers. But I love the idea of honoring the space that something or someone precious holds in your life.
I was thinking about this recently--how I am always writing in my head. If only I could get those words to morph onto a page!
And I have to say, your husband is better than mine. The only thing Mike ever put in our freezer was a dead armadillo. 😳