Saying Goodbye to a Dear Friend

 

I said goodbye to a friend, today…

For the fourth time in my life, I had to say goodbye to a dear friend- the rare kind of friend who walks into the room when the rest of the world walks out, the kind of friend who never shows a bad side or contempt or impatience and is always there for you, even when you don’t want them to be.

Three dogs and a cat.

I was in my late twenties when I said goodbye to Ribsey, a foundling English Setter who was my best friend for seventeen years. When I was a boy and was all alone, without a friend in the world, Ribsey followed me everywhere- even chasing the bus I rode to parochial school, a mile-and-a-half-away. He’d wait in the schoolyard until I rode the bus home, again chasing it all the way back to where the day began.

I was thirty-three when my young family lost Lady Di, a beautiful Brittany Spaniel we bought at a shopping mall while visiting friends. She came before the kids were born and was part of their lives in their toddling years. A sickly dog, who was bedeviled with bad teeth, severe epilepsy and she even survived a heartworm attack, until one morning when we found her in the backyard seemingly asleep, but already cold to the touch…we didn’t see that one coming, given the fact she was only nine years old.

A few months later, we took the kids to a puppy farm in Matthews County and adopted a young puppy Yellow Labrador Retriever whose russet color prompted one of the kids to name the dog “Clifford,” after the books they were enjoying at the time. Clifford was a mighty dog who was such a great swimmer he could tow me (I am a large man) onto the ocean shore from a distant sandbar with my grabbing his tail and enjoying the ride. He’d wear out my arm throwing tennis balls as far as I could out into the ocean, and he would retrieve the balls and swim them back to me, over and over and over again. He survived the doomed marriage to my kids’ mother, remained with me after we separated, and was three months shy of his fourteenth birthday when liver cancer took him four days after he was diagnosed. I was forty-seven and the year was 2005.

Ever a dog person, I nevertheless adopted Bootsie, a stunningly beautiful Maine Coon cat, from an animal shelter a year before I lost Clifford. That was 2004, and I only did so to provide my second wife’s aging cat with a playmate. When wife #2 left, I came within a cat’s whisker of letting her take Bootsie but had a change of heart when she was being put into my-soon-to-be-ex’s car and grabbed her. It prompted an argument, of course, but my name was on the adoption papers, so Bootsie was mine and I kept her. In the lonely years that followed, there were times when the loneliness gripped my soul and I entertained thoughts of ending it all, but every time this happened, Bootsie would climb up on top of me, lay on my chest while I sobbed, reminding me that I had to stick around to take care of her. Small for her breed, she’d spend countless days in the stairwell window watching the birds which flew outside.

With the arrival of my current wife, Mary Ella, her elderly Bichon Frise “Jax” entered our world and Bootsie was far from happy. Sometimes she would hiss at him for no reason at all and on two occasions, they got into it and it was Jax who paid the price both times- better not to tangle with “hypodermic” claws and teeth. Eventually, Jax learned his lesson the hard way and just ignored her but it didn’t matter- the hisses were often and just as certain in their intent. In the last several months, though, Bootsie stopped with the hissing and would even stand up on her hind legs to sniff at him while he slept on our living room sofa. Occasionally, his tender heart got the best of him and he’d give her a kiss, which she tolerated with all of the disdain a cat can muster in her expression, following.

On April 11th of this year, Jax was sitting atop our living room ottoman when, out of the blue, Bootsie leapt up voluntarily to sit beside him. This was a first, and Mary Ella raced around to get a snapshot for posterity. Then, a few hours later when we are talking, Bootsie started turning in a tight counter-clockwise circle, over and over, again. At first, we laughed but the laughing stopped when she was still turning in a circle, ten minutes later.

Our veterinarian (who also looked after Clifford), a wonderful man with a kind heart, paid us a house call and took a blood sample to rule out kidney and liver ailments. Her blood sugar was elevated but she showed no other signs of ketoacidosis, and in examination, he ruled out idiomic vestibular syndrome- based on eye-function, leaving him to conclude it was either feline dementia, brain lesion or brain tumor.

In the two weeks that followed, her condition worsened with these “spinning” episodes lasting some four hours, pacing when she wasn’t turning circles or sitting on her haunches, staring at nothing. Then, as the episodes continued her appetite practically disappeared along with her interest in anything else, followed by her abandoned use of her cat box, and in the last week it became apparent that she lost her eyesight, as well. Brain tumor confirmed, based on the rapid pace of symptom deterioration in such a short time.

So, this past weekend and this morning allowed me to say my tearful and sobbing goodbyes to Bootsie. I sat with her for hours while cradling her in the shirt-tail of the t-shirt I was wearing, and awaiting the arrival of her kind doctor who would take her to the special place in my heart, already occupied by Ribsey and Lady Di and Clifford.

It is said that all dogs go to heaven and cat enthusiasts will say the same thing about their cats. Being a mortal of fifty-nine years, I can’t say for sure, but this much I do know… When someday I cross that river and come to belong to the ages, I will know I am in heaven when I see three dogs and a cat waiting for me, that we might spend an eternity running and playing together.

My last words to Bootsie were the same words I said to Ribsey and to Clifford, just before they received euthanasia:

“I’m so sorry…I love you…please, please wait for me…I’ll be there, soon enough…”

I said goodbye to a friend, today…

Regretfully,

-Drew Nickell, 30 April 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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