This is a personal essay and a travel essay combined. It was one of the most difficult papers I’ve written because I got teary-eyed writing it. Even after fifty years, I still miss Suzie.
Remembering Suzie
I remember the first time we met. She was a little, white but turning gray dog and I was a three year old boy. We lived across the street from each other in Weiser, Idaho. The year was 1951. Old Mr. Butler, the gentleman who lived with Suzie, saw me playing in the yard and asked me if I wanted to meet her. Mom said it was fine, and we both walked over to visit them. Suzie and I became instant friends. She particularly liked the way I rubbed her belly.
“If you keep that up, you’ll have a friend for life,” Mr. Butler told me. “She never forgets a friend, or an enemy, either.” Suzie loved to play fetch, too, and her favorite toy was an old sock…
The wind in my face momentarily distracted me from my reverie. The scenery whizzed by in a blur as I held on to the rope that tied all our worldly possessions down in the back of the old flat-bed truck. My two older brothers and I were riding on the furniture in the back, while Mom and Dad were in the cab. I was five and a half years old, the oldest brother, Albert, was fifteen and a half and the middle brother, David, was eleven and a half.
Al said to me in a serious tone, “Wes, if you don’t blink once in a while, your eyeballs will fall out.” I looked at them, though not very clearly, for there was a single tear drop in each eye. David couldn’t hold back his snickering, but said nothing. I blinked, and the floodgate of tears opened up. It took them several minutes before they could get me to speak.
“I miss Suzie already and I don’t know if we will ever get to come back to visit her again.” We were moving to Boise, Idaho’s State Capitol, where Dad had purchased some farm land. Al and David tried to reassure me we would have lots of opportunities to come back and visit. They reminded me that Mom and Dad had friends there, too; and so did they.
“But Mr. Butler said she was already old. What if…?” and I stopped in mid sentence. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it; like I was aborting a spell I didn’t want to cast, although I knew nothing of such things then, it is how I felt upon reflection, years later. So instead, I said, …I just miss her a lot already, okay?”
The truck, a 1927 Dodge flat-bed with side-boards up, pulled over at a small store along the highway and everyone got to get out and stretch their legs, get something to drink and eat and use the fasicilities as needed. Then we loaded up and were back on the road. Al and David resumed their license plate game they had started earlier: trying to be the first to recognize a different state than they had already spotted. It was amazing how many vehicles there were, until you realized it was summer and most were on vacation.
But I wasn’t paying too much attention to them. I was trying to remember everything I could that Mr. Butler had told me about Suzie. She was fifteen years old, which is about 105 in dog years. She had a couple of cataracts in her eyes and a slight limp, but she never complained.
Mr. Butler told me once, “Suzie gets more excited when you come over than with anybody else. She sure loves you a lot.” I was eager, then, to say I loved her, too. When I did, he said, “I can tell by the way you are so gentle with her. And, Wesley, I appreciate it, when I go shopping, and you come over to keep her company. She used to walk to town with me, but she can’t make it that far anymore.” I remember that I said then that it was more fun than work to watch her.
Our first return visit to Weiser didn’t happen a soon as I had wished for, or was led to believe would happen. It was five long years before we got to go back. True to Mr. Butler’s word, Suzie hadn’t forgotten me. Before I even saw her, she was running to greet me. I thought she was going to give me a bath with her tongue. For the rest of the day, we were inseparable. No one else seemed to mind, for they had catching up to do with their friends, too.
The time to go came way too fast for us, and I found myself looking forward to the next visit before we even left for home. It was if I had two homes and was leaving one to go to the other.
Fifty years later, those memories are still as fresh as they were when they happened. Reflecting back, I realize that the first move to Boise was telling me something about life: I had not been looking forward to the future, as my parents must have been; nor was I paying any attention to the present as my brothers had been; but I was looking at what was left behind, at the only thing I had apart from my immediate family. We cannot control the future, only hope and dream and make predictions. And, even then, our predicitons aren’t always accurate. And the present slips by so fast into the endless vault of the past that we barely have time to react to it before it is gone, causing us to constantly atone, make excuses or pat ourselves on the back. The ever-expanding past is all we really have; and yet we don’t really have it, but the memories (in bits and pieces) of our past.
I realize we can’t live in our past, for it is gone and only our memories of it remain. But at the time we moved to Boise, my memories were all I had of Suzie; except for maybe two photographs that have survived the years. And I was going to hold on to those memories as tightly as I could.
I had been glad beyond words over our first visit, becasue the second one didn’t occur until after she had passed on to Doggie Heaven. Mr. Butler had followed her just one short month later. We were going to attend the funeral. There was no other reason for me to go except that I was still too young to be left at home; and I had to “pay my respects.”
I knew it would be useless to argue, if I told them I didn’t have to look for Suzie’s grave marker, because she would always be in my heart. I knew, too, I would never love her less than when she was alive. We had to pay respects to Mr. Butler and was glad to do that, because he was a very good person, and if it hadn’t been for him, I’d never known Suzie’s boundless love. For that I will always be grateful. So I went, and it was a tear-filled time. I had told myself I wasn’t going to be caught crying, because of all that stuff about boys not crying. But, heck, what are tears for, anyway? And when there are too many to keep bottled up, what are we supposed to do with them?
These thoughts, plus the knowledge that I would never be ashamed of Suzie or my memories of her, kept me occupied during the drive there, throughout the funeral service and the drive home. Even being shown her burial spot didn’t impress me as much as everyone thought it would. Would I be able to get over the loss of such a friend as only a few will ever have the honor of knowing? They didn’t realize I would never get over her, but that is perfectly okay with me. I remember…the way she loved to have her belly rubbed. Especially that last one. It seemed to last for hours. Maybe it had, but we hadn’t been keeping track. We had only been rejoicing.
I remember our last game of fetch with her sock. That had happened much earlier than our last visit, for it eventually fell apart and Mr. Butler had given us an old glove to use instead. He had lost the mate to it years earlier and was saving it for this purpose. He had written me a letter, once, notifying us of Suzie’s death, and said she had been using the glove for a pillow. She would not let anyone touch it, much less play fetch with them. I was her fetch partner.
I remember wondering, during our one and only return visit when she was alive, if that was actually going to our last time together. Hoping it wouldn’t while dreading it would made our last few hours together bitter-sweet, a memory I would not trade for anything in the world, except Suzie herself, of course; because I remember…
