Bella The Beauty

I called you “Bella The Beauty” because you were a fetching girl, an Audrey Hepburn type. Many times I counted myself lucky to be seen with you, like a man who feels like his lady is too good for him. You had high cheekbones and big brown eyes that were narrow and shaped to perfection and you had this perfect spot on your head like an enchanted third eye. Your little frame was cut and chiseled in musculature, and you could stare right into me if you wished. I truly adored you.

You arrived at a perfect time in my life and were the only living thing I have ever been solely responsible for. It was a joy. You gave me reason to rise out of bed in the morning and to come home early at night. You got me off the couch and out on the levee after dinner. You explored our world nose down and I wish I’d been more patient with you out there some nights, as you experienced our existence on Earth in a way I never could, smelling the secrets of the soil.

You were a comfort, a friend, and a companion. I felt kinship when I turned under the covers at night and sensed your 20 pound presence on top of them. It grounded me. Someone was there. You pacified me after night terrors and kept me company through bouts of insomnia. That one night, you were my only living tether to reality. The patter of your toenails on the floor while I washed dishes or folded laundry were the light motif of a familiar friend and a reminder that I was functioning as a responsible human because you were alive, healthy, and happy. Living with you was not living alone.

You were protective to a fault. If I got out of the truck I always found you in the driver’s seat when I returned. You sat where I sat any time I was gone. Yes, sometimes you invented foes. Possums and postal workers were no great threat. But other times you were more intuitive than I was. You knew about that one guy. You were duty bound, a good girl.

I wish I would have called you to me instead of rushing to get you the morning of your fight. You saw me move forward and took it as an advance. You put yourself physically between me and the threat. You were a soldier.

You were a muse and a hero and an inspiration for me, the way an aged oak tree or a haunted owl or field of flowers might be to someone else. You were a child of the Universe and it will frustrate me forever how that Universe was so unkind to you, always seeming to deliver another trauma or hardship that you had to hurtle. I’m sorry for that. I will hold a grudge.

To help, I bought you the good food, and always tried to take you with me, and kept you up on medications and appointments. I walked you many nights and most of them, we had the river and the city beyond to ourselves it seemed. We were like spectres of the late night in our solitude out there. And yes, I let you finish a few meals of mine, or threw you a beef bone for better or worse.  

Because you had been abandoned before, I tried to take you wherever I went. So we went to Miami and Michigan and Memphis and stayed in cabins and went on hikes all over the South. Bella rode.

The Universe worked its last stiff match with you and I don’t blame you for tapping out this time. Maybe the surgeries, the antibiotics, the anesthesias, the painkillers, the steroids, or the many upheavals you endured wore you down. I’ll still close the gate behind me or maybe put my plate on the floor or save a soup bone for a few weeks I suppose. Your fur will cling to blankets and upholstery. Your toys will lurk under couches and mattresses. Everywhere there will be little ghosts of you lingering in our timespace. I’ll hold on to those things as I hold on to your memory and our bond, the unique binary system we formed these tough last years. It improved me. It strengthened my mettle.

As you seemed to lose your spirit more recently, I picked you up and just held on to you and felt your living presence and tried to be as present as I could, for you and for myself, several times a day. Knowing at this age how quickly our present becomes our past. But these moments always pass through us, regardless of how aware we try to be of them before they do.

Now you have passed through, on, away. 

I received word and rushed to get you and brought you home and sat with you as you lay there, not alive, but as alive as you ever would be again. You were warm, limp, ethereal. There was an overpowering rush of grief that filled our room. A thunderstorm ran through outside. Your heaving chest which tormented us for 36 hours, was finally still. I sat there with you drinking and listening to minor chords for an hour or so. Making sure to feel as much as I could, so later I could heal as much as I could. After a while, the ugliness of death began its encroachment on us, and your wake concluded.

I’m sorry this happened at the onset of Spring but, I will look for your in the backyard blooms of the rose bush. Your atoms will live on through it. I’ll always carry my custodianship of you close to my soul. It was a true treasure to serve you and I’ll always cherish your charge. Thank you so much, Bells.