It has been a sad week in our home. Our dog that has been part of my family for 13.5 years died. He had not been eating right and generally just didn't look good. As I took him to the vet I noticed he looked even worse. And he continued to get worse once we got there. After the blood work and the x-rays the vet told me I could take him home and watch him overnight if I wanted to (which I did), but eventually conceded I might be making a mistake. She expected I would be back first thing in the morning with him to end his suffering. He had heart disease and his heart had enlarged to the point where it basically filled his chest cavity which, among other obvious problems, made it very difficult for him to breathe.
This was the first time I had been to this vet. We've never really found a vet here in Clermont that we have been knocked over by. But Dr. Dwyer is our vet if we ever need one again. Her compassion for Yeats and me was so obvious and present. We bid on a veterinary "well-check" at Zach's preschool during a school fundraiser. We won. Say what we want, but even in that God's hand may have been involved. I don't know where I would have turned for help and who knows what answers or compassion we would have found.
So I am mourning the passing of a good friend and companion. I am mourning the lost opportunity to care for him like I would like to have done. If I recounted the things in life that we have gone through while Yeats was with us I would write for days and days. They’ve not just been trivial life, but the heavy stuff that we all face at one time or another, it just seems like for Kathleen and I there’s been a bunch together. This year alone we’ve had three surgeries and a broken arm—the only one not operated on or casted is Hannah. We’ve been challenged by Zach’s respiratory problems (asthma and others) since his birth. That lead to Yeats having to move outside. The month before Zach was born Kathleen lost her mother and the year before that (2004) her grandmother. Our first baby was born March 25, 2002. It was two years and some intervention by a fertility team before we conceived Hannah. Believing we couldn’t get pregnant on our own we didn’t worry about contraceptives and just a few months after Hannah was born while Kathleen’s c-section incision was still healing we found out we were pregnant with Seth. Seth was born March 24, 2003. Seth almost died at one-month and the next year with him was life-changing.
I got Yeats around June of 1995. He was a stray wondering the countryside near the rural mid-western town of West Frankfort where I had grown up (may sound picturesque, but that’s just words—it’s where I grew up and while it is special to me it wouldn’t be to anyone who didn’t know or care about me). He showed up at my grandmother’s home which was on the other side of our property. My cousin took him to a lake not too far away and if he was still there in a couple of days was going to put him down. I decided to keep him. At the time I was living in an apartment in Carbondale while going to college. I was trying to come out of some very bad habits (as well as not harassing my future wife because we had parted ways) and so I moved home to get a more solid base, save some money and take care of Yeats. I named him Yeats because that was the only author/poet that I found appealing when I took English Lit my second year of school. My appeal for William Butler Yeats was no doubt stoked by favorite contemporary author at the time, Stephen King, whose book The Stand quotes Yeats. The adapted TV miniseries has Ed Harris quoting Yeats’ “The Second Coming”. As the plague spreads Harris says “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;”. Here is the rest of the passage:
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood dimm'd tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
My life has changed drastically from those days. I would not repeat in this avenue the life I lived and struggled to move through during those days. Everyone, including Yeats, suffered from the outward manifestations of my inner turmoil. That’s not to say that I went around beating him or other people, I did not. The transformation has taken years and years. Most of Yeats’ life I have been trying to figure out what life is about and what mine should look like and trying to get there. It’s only recently that my understanding is that I am on a journey. I want to move through life following Jesus Christ, but I do not have an earthly destination. At no time in this body will I arrive.
I’ve been writing and drinking coffee for over an hour now, so let me move to the end. Yeats was born and Yeats died. In the middle he lived. It’s like the saying about the dash on a tombstone between the dates: it represents what we did with our lives. Yeats was a good dog (mostly) and a devoted companion (excluding the times when he escaped and we had to chase him down—about a dozen of them). His dash was good. I hope I get to see him again. I am not aware that there is anything in the Bible that says I will not. Animals are certainly part of the millennial kingdom.
Likewise we are born and we die. What happens in our dash tells all about what happens after we die. Romans 6:23 says “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We will live for eternity in one of two places, heaven or hell. By grace through faith in Jesus Christ I have been saved (thus the song for today). Even though I am sad that Yeats died I remember during these times death is not the end, certainly not for humans. I mourn my friend, and my mourning will give way to good memories. But he was a great part of my dash and I hope I was a great part of his dash too. For me, the most important part of my dash is the transaction I had with God where He delivered me from an eternal jail and adopted me as His son.
Some might ask “Geez Matt, your dog died, isn’t this a little much?” or “aren’t you over-spiritualizing all of this?” The best way I know to answer is that I would not be authentic if I didn’t write about what I believe. I believe in what happens to us at the end of our dash. It is part of my everyday life. It is part of how I treat people. It should have been a more prominent part of how I treated Yeats. I don’t do it perfectly and God forgives my shortcomings, but I believe in eternity and I believe in salvation. I hope what I have written is authentic to me.
