Hey Beau,
Exactly one week ago, to the minute, I sat alone at home on the couch, hugging a pillow and crying like a child because I knew that at that exact moment, you were in my brother´s arms, falling asleep for the last time.
I spent the whole day in tears. The thought that your pure spirit had left us was unbearable. The notion that your tired fluffy body, that I had held and caressed and hugged and stroked a million times, was now alone and lifeless and cold, left behind at the vet´s surgery awaiting removal was unbearable.
Why we didn’t opt for a cremation or a funeral? Because it would not have lessened our grief. And because we do not need an urn to remember you. The greatest monument we could ever create in your name is the memory we carry in our hearts, Beau. We were so proud to be your dog pack and you were such a precious part of it.
Saturday Jeff and I drove to Voorhout –you lived with my mom because we both work long hours and also because you knew you needed to protect her more than us!- and it was so strange… Normally we would say to each other that you would go ballistic when you saw us, and that you always sensed we were on our way because you’d get all excited and gaze at the front door half an hour before we’d arrive. But this time we just drove in silence, both dreading the moment we’d walk into the house I grew up in, and not be greeted by a happy Coton.
It was as awkward as we knew it would be. To see empty spaces where your food bowls had been, or your beds (you had three just in the living room) was so strange, it felt so wrong. I spent the whole day talking about you with mom, and we cried many times. And when we cried we missed you even more because you’d always sense we were sad and come up to console us without even being asked. But this time there was no nudge from your shiny nose and no gentle little lick on my calves to say ‘hey brother, it’ll be alright’. Because it’s not going to be alright, Beau. Not without you.
Sometimes I think someone –and you were a someone!- never truly dies as long as he lives on in the hearts of those who loved him. And as long as their voice rings in their ears their spirit remains on earth. I hear your bark, Beau. You had such a wide range of barks, and we knew exactly what each of them meant.
There was the ‘Hey! You forgot me in the garden’-bark. There was the ‘Who dares walk past our house’-bark, and its louder cousin ‘Who dares walk past our house with a dog’-bark. There was the ‘Hey you stupid dog from the street behind us, your mom’s a bitch’-bark that you preferred to let out in the middle of the night. There was the excited ‘Oh! I know where we are going! Beach!!!’-bark. There was the angry ‘How dare you leave the car without me’-bark. And there was the gentle ‘You may give me my cookie now’-bark.
I could say that I will never hear those barks again, but the truth is that I hear them all the time. Just as I still hear my father’s laughter. Right now, I am working from home, and it feels as if you are here with me, lying in your fluffy dog bed having a nap, always at the ready to provide a cuddle. I instinctively want to reach down to the right of me where you used to be, and stroke your fluffy head. ‘Memory is the presence of an absence’… truer words were never spoken.
Oh Beau. I guess I always knew you would be hard to get over. I will always well up when a sudden memory hits me or when I see your wise, loving eyes gaze at me from a photo. Or when we talk about you –and we do that a lot. I am now going to make a beautiful photo album that documents your wonderful life from start to finish. And I promise we will keep talking about you and telling the world about how a brave, gentle, smart, funny, clever, wise and loving little dog has made all our lives better by choosing to share it with us.
I whisper your name into the darkness every night before I go to sleep and hope to see you in my dreams.
Farewell my angel.
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