Millie Watching the Snow

I lost a friend Saturday.

No. Stop. I take that back. I didn’t lose her. I had to let her go.

She was ill. She was hurting. It was time for her to be free.

Millie was more than a pet. They always are. She was a memory keeper. She was a connection to those in my past that matter most in my present. They always are.

Millie came to our family wounded. She was hit by a car as a puppy and her right front leg was forever crippled. My parents adopted her and she lived a magical existence meandering her way around their small farm. She ran without a hindrance, only a limp. There is a difference.

When my father died suddenly and Millie’s frailty merged with my mother’s, it became time for me to be her caregiver. I lived on that farm that Millie loved to wander. My mother had moved months earlier and Millie made the move to a small house along with Mom. I was the last of my immediate family still living on family land. It was time for Millie to come home and live there again with me.

We enjoyed a cozy winter and a magnificent spring. I’d cleared an overgrown pasture the previous summer and autumn. It was a gnarly and prickly plot of land. The overgrowth reached seven or eight feet in spots. Thorns ripped at your clothes if you tried to pass.

But I removed all of that thickness and by April native grasses and wildflowers emerged. I shaped walking trails through the new landscape. The weeds were gone. Birds and bees returned. Rabbits hopped through the tall grass. Chipmunks skirted about. Each afternoon when I returned home from work Millie would join Homer, my mixed breed, and me for walks through the field. It was harder for her, but she was always eager to go and never gave up. She rested frequently, but never stopped. She smiled and ran when she could. She rolled in the fresh flowers. She stared at the warm sun.

She strolled without a hindrance, only a limp. There is a difference.

By summer I’d accepted a teaching position seven hours away. In July, Millie, Homer and I moved into a small house in a small town so that I could begin a new career at a small university. We knew no one, so we all hunkered down together and made our way.

Millie’s health declined. She no longer had the farm, the only home she’d ever really known. Our new town has hills. We were all accustomed to maneuvering the flatlands of the Mississippi Delta. Walks are easier there. One doesn’t have to navigate up or down. You need only address forward or back. Like being in a rocking chair.

So when the seizure came and pounded her already weakened body, it was time to ease her hurting. Her task was complete - she helped usher me from what was to what may be.

Millie connected me to my past in the way books and photos and video recordings never can. She was a piece of my parents that joined me on my journey when the two of them couldn’t physically do so. Millie was their stand-in. I gave her hugs the same way my father did. She sat in my chair with me the same way she climbed into my mother’s recliner as Mom read by the fire. She snored as she slept on her mattress next to my bed the same way she did with my parents for more than a decade.

She was more than a friend., she was a memory keeper. There is a difference.