And once we figure out there is POWER to be gained…..

One day, I realized it had been quite a while since they’d gone in, and I asked why they didn’t visit Grandad any more. In response, my parents did something for which I will be eternally grateful. They sat me down and told me he had died, and they explained what that meant. No fairy tales. They made it clear he was gone.

I grew up with no fear of death, and I am sure that is why.

•••

My first dog was deeply disturbed, mentally. It was like living with an unexploded bomb. But I loved him beyond measure, and he was fiercely loyal and protective to me.

Until he bit me. A week later, he ran away. The same parents who had been so smart about handling my grandfather’s death, told me he had probably been picked by some farmer (we were living in a very rural area) and now running and playing on his farm. I was ten. I bought their story, and a few weeks later later they brought home another dog.

But I kept looking for Friskie the whole year we stayed in that house.

Ten years later—half my lifetime!—I was sitting at the kitchen table while my mother made lunch. Out of nowhere a phantom thought dropped into my head. “Friskie didn’t ‘run away’, did he?” Mom turned pale and sat down across from me. She told me the truth, that they’d had him put down.

(An additional layer. It wasn’t long after they acquired that second dog, Taffy, that we moved again, back to an apartment that didn’t allow dogs. My parents gave him to family friends who lived too far away for me to ride my bike to visit. The new family let him run loose. Within a year he was hit by a car and killed.)

•••

Condolences, Michael.