The Bear I never had

Grandma closed the front door and walked over to the wide glider where I was sitting. In her hands, she held a plastic bag full of peas and an empty bowl, both of which she placed on the table beside me.

As we began to shell the peas into the bowl, we kept one eye on my little brothers, who were playing in the yard with Grandma and Grandpa’s big tri-color collie.

Afternoons at Grandma’s house were usually quiet like this. Well, not exactly quiet. Grandma and Grandpa’s farm was full of sounds. They were carried to us on the wind from the barn, from the yard, from the field. The sounds mixed with the chiming of Grandma’s wind chimes as they went past, greeting our ears with a peaceful, quiet sort of noise.

It was the sounds I heard in the van that would always alert me to the fact that we were driving down the quarter mile long driveway to my grandparents’ house. The crunch of gravel under our tires. The wind blowing through the leaves in the wooded path. Then, as we went further, the pony’s whinny, or the cow’s moo. And always, always, when we reached the house, Grandma’s wind chimes would mix with the barking of a certain dog who somehow knew that the big van pulling up near the fence was bringing someone to play with.

Tinkle, Tinkle!

Arf! Arf!

I love those sounds. Those sounds meant playtime, inside and outside. Different toys, fresh air, an acre of woods to play in, and, depending on the season, Grandma’s sugar cookies. Those sounds meant, “We’re here! After forty five minutes of nonstop driving, we’re finally here!” In the summer, it meant that we could finally get out of our stifling hot van and play with Bear.

Bear had been on the farm since before I was born. I always knew he would be there, ready to jump on me, and to let me jump on him if I wanted to, as soon as I jumped out of the van.

Now, as I sat shelling peas in the cool shade of the porch while my brothers played themselves silly in the oppressive July heat, Bear barked and panted from behind the fence, dying for them to come into the field and play with him.

“Grandma,” I asked, opening a pea with a snap, “where did you find Bear? Was he at a shelter?”

Grandma shook her head and dropped a few peas into the bowl.

Plink, plink.

“No, a friend told us about him. When Jack and Duchess died, Grandpa and I decided that we wanted another collie.”

I had heard about Jack and Duchess. They were both collies, and my Dad told me that they were great dogs, but I never met them. They died before I was born.

“This friend told us that somebody they knew had found a collie that needed a home. They were just going to put him in a shelter, so we told them that we wanted a collie puppy and to wait until we could see it.”

Snap! Plink, plink, plink.

Arf! Arf!

Tinkle, tinkle!

“When we saw the dog, our hearts were immediately pricked at the sight of him. His ears had been purposefully broken and just hung there at the sides of his face. His nose was raw and covered in blood, and he looked like he hadn’t eaten in days.”

Grandma stopped working and looked out to the field at Bear, who had convinced my brothers to play with him and was now leaping around them joyfully, licking them whenever he could.

“He wasn’t at all what he should’ve been. The first words that came to my mind when I saw him were the words ‘living skeleton’.”

Bear? A living skeleton? I watched the beautiful dog I had always known as he bounded through the field beside my brothers, headed for the creek.

“We took him home on a trial basis. It was so obvious he’d been abused that we wanted to make sure he wasn’t aggressive. The vet told us that he was 3 years old, not the puppy we were looking for, but we knew he was supposed to stay with us. It didn’t take us long before we learned he didn’t have a mean bone in his body.”

Splash, splash!

Tinkle!

Arf!

I knew the rest of the story just by looking at him. He had been loved back to health over the next eleven years, and now he was happy and beautiful. The best dog I’d ever known.

Our family visited again many times after Grandma told me Bear’s story. On one of the visits, I listened with eager anticipation to the familiar sounds. The crunch of the gravel. The wind in the trees. The cow in the pasture. Grandma’s wind chimes.

Nothing else.

And I knew something was wrong.

Grandma told me that it was heart failure. Although I am not an extremely emotional person, I cried myself to sleep that night. Bear was supposed to always be there to greet us when we jumped out of the van. The absence of his barking hurt my heart every time I noticed it.

But if Bear taught me anything, it was to cherish every moment. Because when Bear died, I realized that one day, so would everybody else. And even though I can’t stop it even if I try, I can take advantage of every single moment with my family and friends.

Those quiet, noise-filled afternoons on my grandparents’ farm are more precious than ever to me now, because I know that the chore of shelling peas with Grandma will one day be taken from me. I treat the trips to the creek with my brothers and sisters with more enthusiasm because I know that one day, I will move away, and my visits to see them will be as few and far between as my visits to see Grandma and Grandpa are.

Bear was the best dog I have ever known. If I ever adopt my own dog, I want him to be just like Bear.