Preacher Step Aside
By Michelle A. Rivera Reprinted with permission.
Hospice Hounds: Animals and Healing at the Borders of Death , published by Lantern Press, contains the heart-warming and inspiring true stories of two dogs — Woody, a yellow Labrador, and Katie, an Australian shepherd — and their therapeutic influences on terminally ill patients at a South Florida hospice facility. Michelle Rivera is a full-time humane educator, state-certified humane officer, and writer.
To be together again in eternity, I will meet you on the other side.
Joseph's sun-brightened room was occupied by a small crowd of people. But despite this jovial setting, the feeling in the room was gray. Five people were standing quietly around the bed, and a minister was standing over the patient, his back to the door. He was reading quite loudly from a Bible. Woody and I were working alone that day, Katie had not wanted to yield her snoozing spot to the other clinic dog, a Chihuahua-mix named Darby who accompanied her mom, Dr. Prior, who also works at the clinic.
We waited silently just outside the door, unobserved for a moment so as not to interrupt what may have been Joseph's last rites. The reading sounded somewhat perfunctory, as if the reader was speaking not so much to his listeners, as at them. The reader was finishing the Twenty-third Psalm — "Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come . . . " — so I quietly took a few steps into the room. The preacher flipped his pages in preparation for the next reading, and the patient stared uninterestedly at the television set mounted on the wall with muted sound. Among the visitors were a very tall, brown-haired boy who looked to be about fifteen years old and his mother, also tall, also brunette. They were, I was to later learn, Joseph's sister and nephew. The other woman in the room was Joseph's wife, Sherry, a sad, pretty woman with strawberry blonde hair. She, too, was tall and dressed in jeans and a bright red sweater. Sherry was being embraced by a man who looked to be in his sixties — Joseph's dad.
There was also a small, tow-headed child, about six, sitting in the big armchair. This beautiful child was Joseph's little boy. It was he who saw us first, and drew in a breath. The visitors facing the door followed the child's gaze and noticed us, reacting with surprise and delight. The pastor stopped reading and looked up at them, then at us. As it registered why we were there, a hint of rejection crossed his face.
The preacher turned to the patient and, with a tone usually employed by one addressing the hard of hearing, asked, "You're not a dog lover, are you Joseph?" To which Joseph answered with a most assertive "Yes!" That's all Woody and I needed to hear and we took this response as an invitation to enter. I swiftly maneuvered Woody past the reverend, who was not surrendering his place easily, and brought her bedside.
"What's her name?" Joseph asked.
"This is Woody. She's my partner." I introduced myself as well. "I know she has a boy's name but she's a girl. She loves to come here."
"Well hi, girl," Joseph said, and stroked Woody on the head for a moment. The others in the room asked a lot of questions about Woody - how old she was, whom she lived with, and how the pet therapy program works. We talked about Woody, who was suddenly the center of all the attention (her preferred situation by far). I fielded all the questions while Joseph continued to pat Woody on the head and pet her, speaking to her like an old school pal.
The teenager spoke up. "Uncle Joe," he said. "Remember Gordon? She looks like Gordon; only Gordon was a little more brown, remember Uncle Joe?"
"I do," answered Joseph weakly. Joseph was a young man, about forty-two. And although he had a muscular build, disease had made him appear aged and decrepit. "I surely do."
Still looking at Woody, he launched into the story of Gordon, a Labrador mix who had come to him on a miserably hot Georgia day. Joseph was just twenty-five at the time, and serving in the Army. "I was stationed in Georgia," he remembered. "And I was grilling some burgers, just drinking a few beers with my wife and my friend Carlos. We'd both just got promotions to staff sergeant, and we were celebrating that we would be heading over to the European theater in a few months. All of a sudden we saw these two dogs just trotting down the side of the highway. It was a busy road that we lived on and I was scared they were gonna get hit by a car or something. It was so hot out I swear there was steam coming off the asphalt on the road. Man, I am telling you, their tongues were hanging out! So I called to them. They came running over like I was a long lost friend. I mean, they didn't hesitate for a second. As soon as they saw me waving them over, they just came running over like it was me they were looking for! It was great!" Joseph smiled at the memory.
I shot a furtive look at the preacher, who was standing stiffly at the foot of the bed, feigning interest. As the tale of Gordon's rescue unfolded, a remarkable thing happened. Joseph's voice became clear, full of vitality and enthusiasm. He appeared to be getting younger before our eyes. The others in the room noticed it as well. They exchanged delighted little smiles.
Joseph continued his story. "I gave the dogs water and some burgers and other stuff around the house, and Sherry gave them a bath. They were so hot and dirty, and, oh my God, they were covered with fleas, remember honey?" He looked over at his pretty wife, her face devoid of makeup and swollen from sleepless grief-filled nights. She was still leaning against her father-in-law. His arm was around her and her head was resting on his capable chest. His face, too, had softened with the tale, and I was suddenly aware of a tragic and strange reality. The young man lying in the hospital bed actually appeared older than his own father. Joseph's young features were clouded by the specter of a fatal disease and made him look unnaturally aged. Sherry had been listening to her husband with a look of warm remembrance, and nodded enthusiastically at Joseph's question. She couldn't trust herself, I'm sure, to utter a single word for fear of ruining the happy moment with an emotional release of tears. Joseph hadn't noticed; he was lost in a fog of remembrance.
Joseph's little son was standing by the bed, petting Woody lovingly, kissing her head, and listening with rapt attention to the story his father was telling. He was captivated by Woody, the story, and the transformation in his Dad. Woody was every bit the picture of angelic joy.
"We let 'em hang around for a few days," Joseph continued. "We kept the Lab and called him Gordon. And we gave the Rottie mix to my friend Paul. Man, we had Gordon for ten years. He was the best dog I ever had. I never got another one. How could I? He was the best."
His voice trailed off and he was looking at Woody, remembering his old friend. "Wow, I hadn't thought of Gordon in years," he whispered. For a few moments we stood in silence, thinking of two old friends trotting down a dangerous highway and being invited to dinner and life anew. The reverend cleared his throat, but nobody looked his way.
Finally, Sherry spoke up carefully. She looked intently into my eyes. "Joey was very attached to Gordon, you know?" she said. "The Army even flew that dog to Ramstein when we got sent over there, and then back again when our time was up. They were always together. I mean, they went everywhere together. He took him to the beach, out on his boat, on fishing trips, just everywhere. So, I told Joey about the Rainbow Bridge, you know about that, right?" I nodded that I did. "I told him that Gordon is probably at the Rainbow Bridge, waiting for all of us. I mean, don't you think we'll see our pets again when we get to heaven?" Her question was more suited perhaps for the preacher to answer, but Sherry wasn't asking him. I read the message in the look she gave me.
The others in the room looked at me expectantly, but it was the preacher who spoke up. "Doggie Heaven?" he said, laughing like he had made a joke. My eyes met hers but I responded to the preachers' remark.
"No," I said firmly, "Heaven."
"Of course there are no animals in Heaven," he replied coldly. He scanned the room for an ally, but there was none. This was a group of animal-lovers and he was completely outnumbered.
"Really?" I asked. "Not according to Revelation. You're the Bible expert," I said respectfully. "But I know that in Revelation we read that white horses will be coming from Heaven."
"Oh, them?" he replied dismissively. "No, I'm sorry, but they're bad animals. They are not exactly pets."
"Oh, I see," I said smiling at the group. "Bad animals, right. Well, the riders may have been bad, I have to agree with you there, with all those bows and swords and stuff. But I can assure you there are no bad animals. All animals are good. They're God's creatures aren't they?" I looked at the group and explained that my mother had been a Bible teacher who taught me about the horses coming from Heaven. I told them that when she died, she knew she would see Patrick, the Irish Water Spaniel we brought with us when we moved to Florida from New York. Of this she had no doubt, and she knew the Bible like nobody's business. I shared with them my belief that my Siamese cat Sable was up there too. I was sure of it; she was waiting for me to come and be with her again. "I just hope it's very sunshiny up there," I told them. "Sable loved to snooze in the sun."
The little group nodded and smiled agreeably. They had loved and lost pets in their lives too, and they were certain they would see them in Heaven. It was settled, and Sherry's question had been sincerely answered. Joseph would see his beloved Gordon again. He knew that, of course. But the reassurance of a matter of faith conveyed to someone about to make a journey into the unknown is of such importance that it bears repeating. Woody's presence in that room at that moment guided Joseph and his anxious family on a joyous stroll down a path to a happier era in their lives. She brought them back to a time when a young soldier and his wife had a future full of promise and prosperity. Woody was the catalyst for Joseph's indulging in a fond memory of days past. But she was also instrumental in him bringing the assurance his troubled mind needed; a promise of a heaven where we will once again be united with our loved ones of all species.
And Woody's presence evoked even more. She was Gordon's escort, and Gordon was never far from Joseph's heart anyway. She brought Gordon back in spirit so as to leave him with Joseph, to be his companion once again in the hours when nobody is visiting and Joseph is alone with his frightening thoughts. Gordon helped his master begin his afterlife anew as Joseph had done for a troubled and homeless dog some twenty years ago. Gordon was with us in the room, and we all felt that. It was a moment that was there and then gone.
Woody's gift to Joseph and his family that day was beyond anything that a preacher or a nurse or a doctor could offer. Woody's gift to Joseph was hope — a precious offering at a time when all expectations, anticipation, and optimism are declared medically impossible. Woody didn't know that to give a hopeless person the promise of something better is so priceless a gift that it is beyond our mortal comprehension. She was just doing what she does best, touching a life on the way to another dimension. It took the dog lovers in the room to recognize what had taken place. Indeed, I almost felt sorry for the preacher and the limits to which he was bound. How sad for him that he couldn't see the miracle that had taken place before our very eyes; the restoration of hope to a hopeless man! In truth, love knows no limits. It is forever crossing boundaries of color, age, gender, religion, geography, and, yes, species. Indeed, it just wouldn't be Heaven without those we love. All of them.
© Michelle A. Rivera, 2001 |
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