Samson's Story

Micha had assumed the role of man of the house after his father had died. It was a long journey to normalcy but the family had started to live again. The pain had retreated to a more distant place. Micha was now 20 years old and a day trader and been doing quite well. After some discussion, his Mom allowed him to invest some of their money. He was at first conservative. But as his confidence in his research grew so did his gambles. And then the stock market took a down turn and kept going. Micha lost all the family investment. He would not, could not tell his Mom. His guilt at losing the family’s savings was too much to bear.

Sitting in their kitchen the only option was to face the tragedy straight on and deal with the truth of now. Both losses for this family, the father and now the son, were unexpected and unfair. Both were more than any one family should endure. The account of Micha was told and re-lived, the guilts shared, the heart breaks expressed, empathy given. I looked at the surviving son who seemed to be overwhelmed with the grief and responsibility of surviving. I told him that his singular obligation is to live the best life he can. That in so doing he honors both his father and his brother. That he was now living his life for both himself and Micha. The words seemed to bring him relief and maybe courage. It’s as if I gave him permission to breathe.

The grief lingered in the air and as it was too soon to make a departure from this condolence call, the need to change the topic beckoned. Thankfully the family had pets; a rambunctious dog and some cats. Stephen, the surviving son, regaled us with tales of the dog and how the cats came to be. Such an easy place to focus. I myself was a dog lover. There was a story I kept in reserve to tell. It’s the story I always used when asked “tell me something about yourself”. It’s a question that I really hated and it was frequently asked at a time and in a place where I felt that I should not have to provide information about me. I understood though, that the question was a way to help the individual asking, remember me. To navigate these uncomfortable moments without offense and to avoid stress, I had a few stories at the ready. One of them was about a family Dog, Samson.

Samson was a beautiful silky terrier. He was so brilliant. He thrived on challenges. He was a “go” dog. He always wanted to be engaged and doing. So Samson was taught various tricks; reading being one. I’d hold up a sign with a command randomly. Samson would look at it and then do the command. One of his other tricks was to play dead. So I would say “Bang Bang, you’re dead” and Samson would lay down pretending to be dead, except... he knew he did the trick right, so he’d look up and wag his tale at you which was adorable and hilarious. As we were talking about dogs, this was the story I started to tell. I could see my husband’s eyes widen as if to say don’t. But I did. It was only when I got to the “Bang Bang, You’re Dead” that I realized my transgression. I wish I could have stopped my mouth but no.… As the words left my mouth, I was mortified. How could I?!!!! My mind was racing trying figure out how to compensate. How does one recover from such a faux pas? Bang, you’re dead. Exactly how young Micha had taken his life in an unfortunate moment of despair.

I was so grateful for the friend who showed up for a condolence visit right after my unfortunate utterance. We were able to exit. In the car I turned to my husband and we laughed and cried at the same time. My husband said that he could not sink far enough into the cushions. Has there ever been a worse foot in mouth?

It was two years before we visited the family again as they had moved to another State. Samson sat in the pit of my stomach the entire time and I prayed they would not remember my calamitous tale. I still have Samson’s story in reserve but now it shares that moment of anguish when I exercised a lack of better judgement.