Semper Si
LABASH, MATT
Casual Semper Si Since readers generally don’t expect to be embarrassed by the magazines they subscribe to (though we often oblige at no extra charge), I’ve always thought it wise to avoid...
...For a fat boy, he was terribly athletic...
...Upon arriving at the clinic, I settled up for the last time, spotting on my receipt the line item we’d paid thousands to avoid: “Euthanasia K9—$0.00...
...Such offerings are best left to diaries, or Christmas newsletters read by long-suffering relatives...
...We shared all our mutuallypresumed enthusiasms: I was certain he loved Mexican food and Lyle Lovett tunes...
...But sometimes, love and sorrow brim so full that restraint must be suspended...
...He used to run for miles alongside our bikes...
...Once our fearless guardian, he turned into our shadow...
...There is no surer way to diminish affection than to cast it into words...
...But Lord Byron got it just about right when he eulogized his Newfoundland as one who “possessed beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices...
...I loved Simon for all those reasons, but mostly, I didn’t need any...
...He had black-velvet ears, perfectly spaced spots, and a thick white head that framed a coal-colored nose, making him look as if his mother had mated with a polar bear...
...Last year, after coming home to our boy vomiting blood all over the floor, we learned a new way of life...
...The only sounds were the soul sisters of Stax, and Simon chomping discarded ice cubes, then licking himself with a sub-freezing tongue...
...He seemed convinced I wanted my crotch sniffed and his hair on my pants...
...Casual Semper Si Since readers generally don’t expect to be embarrassed by the magazines they subscribe to (though we often oblige at no extra charge), I’ve always thought it wise to avoid writing with a heart too full of love or sorrow...
...I mewled like a child, and he emitted a noble growl before his kind eyes looked to me for reassurance...
...After he was gone, I went home to search: for his hair on my sweater, for his tennis balls, for some scent that would keep him close...
...Simon was hard to take anywhere, so we mostly kept him home, where he nursed other bad habits: biting the bumpers of moving cars, eating bees, so aggressively discouraging garbage collectors that they made us haul our own trash...
...He had cataracts, arthritis, and degenerative hips...
...But none of his svelter brethren was half as handsome...
...We’d take a stack of reading (for me) and Jerky Treats (for him...
...As an older dog, he morphed into a lethargic giant, allowing children to yank his ears and pizza delivery boys to escape unmolested...
...Si was always about 40 pounds past show-dog quality...
...But that was many vet visits ago...
...We learned to tell Si “no” when he rested his head in our laps, batting his lashes for the steaks and chops that we’d formerly shoveled into his oil-drum torso...
...As some stranger administered his last shot, Simon and I lay sprawled on the floor, me holding his big, smooth head...
...My wife and I lost our best friend the other day—our sevenyear-old dalmatian, Simon...
...I kissed his snout and told him he was a good boy...
...we forgave his marksmanship and wore short sleeves...
...Besides the overdose of phenobarbital, it’s hard to say what finished him...
...Most vital, we learned to stick his neck with an insulin injection every morning...
...But what really hurt him was the diabetes...
...If Heaven shows itself on this earth only in glimpses, my preview reel ran on warm days of porch-loitering with Si...
...Though he’d wag his tail to show us he wasn’t hurt, he had more track marks than a Calvin Klein runway model...
...But it doesn’t help me forget that I’m one porch-sitter short...
...Many of God’s creatures met untimely demises between his playful jaws: cockatoos, rabbits, and an assorted meat tray of rodentia...
...My wife cried, and I fixed Si a plate of spaghetti so he could meet his maker with a marinara smile...
...Matt Labash...
...It helps me remember that the world stills itself for no one, least of all a diabetic dalmatian...
...With the whole porch to stretch out on, he always sat under my rocker, where his runaway tail would inevitably get crunched, sending us into paroxysms of yelps and apologies...
...Since he left, I sit outside in the mornings and force my way through the newspaper...
...He’d had surgery twice on a torn cruciate ligament, which made him totter like a three-legged endtable...
...I don’t know what I hated more —watching him get sick or remembering him healthy...
...Whenever our car pulled into the driveway, he’d proudly strut into the headlights, then try to impress by giving chase to some imaginary squirrel...
...He followed me to the mailbox, to the bathroom, and into the middle of driveway basketball games—with no regard for three-second violations...
...We gauged his blood-sugar by dipping reagent strips in his urine stream (he forgave our intrusiveness and stood still like a champ...
...Two weeks ago, the vet called during dinner, telling us it was time to “put Simon down”—that curious euphemism that sounds as if they’re going to insult your dog instead of kill him...
Vol. 4 • March 1999 • No. 26
