Spring, 1984
A little over two weeks ago, at around 10:15 on a rainy Sunday night, our dog was hit and killed by a car. We were out of town for the weekend, and Rudy had been left, as often happened, in the care of our, and his, dear friend Hugh. Hugh let him out for a short run—a fatal mistake—and Rudy began his last voyage, which ended when his meandering path interested the linear path of Paul Healy’s car in front of 1047 Beacon Street.
Actually, this wasn’t his last voyage. His last voyage was to Angell Memorial Hospital, on a stretcher, his back broken, his legs stiff, and his eyes dilated. Hugh stayed with him the whole way, and sat talking to him alone before the shot was administered. Poor Hugh. He had to say goodbye for all of us.
In the days following the accident, I’d disappear into my office to shed a few quiet tears, then return to the chaos of scheduling problems, conferences, and phone calls. I found myself stopping students I knew to engage them in conversations about how much a dog can mean to a person. They must have thought I was nuts.
I don’t think of my dog any longer as Rudy, but as the Finneman Beast, a remarkable name Allie, four years old, came up with a year ago. Memories, images, associations cling to me the way that burrs used to stick to Finneman’s underside after a run in the woods. The shoe box he slept in as a puppy. The hours we spent, before children, at a nearby park throwing and chasing tennis balls. The way he cocked his head when he heard his name, or the names of any of his close friends.
Because I never got to say goodbye to him, his death reminds me of all the other goodbyes I never said, or half-said, or wanted to say but didn’t. And I think it prepared me, in a small way, for all the unimaginably hard goodbyes that are ahead. Allie dealt very well with his friend’s sudden disappearance, as he has no idea what goodbyes really mean. “Is Finny lonely? We wish our Finny didn’t get ran over, right? If we got a cat, it wouldn’t be able to pick up a pillow, right?” But still, in a way he couldn’t understand, death is now a character in his imagination.
In two short weeks, I’ve become more hardened to the loss than I ever thought I would. It turns out that life is actually a little easier without a dog, particularly when there are two other small creatures demanding my time. But the house seems awfully quiet when I come home at the end of the day, and I don’t like that much at all. I wish there were a Finneman Beast there, with a pillow in his mouth and a tennis ball on his mind.