Go play.

[bodlon]

When I was fifteen, I was in a rather nasty auto accident. I still have faint scars on my right cheek where some fragments of glass ended up in my face. That accident paid for my first car — a ten year old white Chevy Cavalier — and that first car is how we got Flidais.

The story I told my mother when I brought her home was more dramatic than the truth. I said I’d noticed a taped-up cardboard box on the side of Highway 17, and that it was wiggling, and so I’d stopped to investigate. The real truth is that I’d been visiting an ex and his family, and there was a tiny, wormy stray that the neighbors didn’t know what to do with. So I brought her home.

She was at that point pretty much exactly the size, shape, and color of an eggplant. An eggplant with ears and puppy legs, and who chewed on things (like my hardback copy of Good Omens) and did not arrive house trained, but otherwise it was an excellent likeness.

And then she grew. And grew. Good gods, did she grow. Fli was a Very Big Dog. Not quite a giantess by Labrador standards, but she was Not Small. By the time I left home, she’d arrived at her adult size.

Mom kept her and cared for her after I was gone. Every time I suggested that maybe I could arrange for a place that she could move up to Columbia, mom demurred. Fli was part of the family back home. Moving would surely not be in her best interests. Eight years later, mom moved up to live here too. Fli came along.

(See mom? I told you I could find a place I could keep her.)

Two winters ago, we started talking about how old Fli was getting. Her mobility in her back legs was starting to fail. Her vision and hearing were getting a little questionable, too. Mom made it clear that she might not make it through the winter.

She did. And then the next. She was never an unhappy dog, I don’t think. She smiled. She was a good girl, and made it to fourteen. She was loved.

I held her head and rubbed her ears when we said goodbye to her this morning. She went peacefully, and I am grateful to the vet and tech who helped her. I’m grateful to mom, for taking care of her more closely these last twelve years. And I’m grateful to Fli, for everything.

Go play, Fli. You were a good girl, and I’ll miss you.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com