Down A Dusty Road

Benjamin
December 25, 1980 = November 12, 1997

WHEN A LIGHT GOES OUT

Benjamin was a special friend, he was the last of four dogs my wife and I shared, but she always left it up to me to make the final decision to put them to sleep. I did this with Ben and the others.

Ben was almost 17 when I said my final Good-Bye to him, one of the hardest days that still haunts me to this day, 18 years later. Because it had to be my decision, I asked the vet for his opinion and he agreed it was time to do it. Ben couldn't walk anymore, I carried him up and down the stairs of my Lexington apartment and I held him up while he used the bathroom. I could tell by the look on his face, it was time for him to go. It was in his eyes.

I was just going to post this on my wall today, but I felt Ben deserved his own story, because he was his own dog, had his own personality, different from the other three who had come before him. He got to share part of his life with two of them before they were put to sleep.

I moved to Lexington from Georgia on the spur of the moment and to this day, I can't tell you a logical reason why I did this. But I did and I brought Ben with me. I could tell his age was catching up to him and I did not want to leave him behind. He was loving and gentle and kind, he didn't seem to mind anything, as long as he was with me. When the divorce happened in 1989, Ben was nine years old and both my wife and I had rescued him at her sister's house in Owingsville on Christmas Day 1980. He was kept outside and it was freezing cold that day, sleet and rain mixed and I kept hearing this sound outside the window. I went outside and found Ben. The person who owned him said she couldn't take care of him, so I put him in the back seat of my car on a quilt and took him to Georgia. He was very sick, but the vet treated him and we took him home.

Over the years, he was as much a part of the household as anybody we knew, He became somebody I needed to take care of. I was miserable in my marriage, trying to live the life of a straight married man and it was destroying me, so when the divorce was final and I moved eight years later, I knew I had to take Ben with me.

He rode in the backseat of my little blue four-door car on the same quilt he rode on to Georgia, completing the cycle, if you will. I moved to Lexington in May 1997 to an upstairs apartment and I was content for the first time in my life. I had my own life and Ben had me, just me. I remember the times we shared custody of him and his going back and forth between the homes was wearing on him. I didn't want the new husband to take him from me like he had taken everything else.

Ben had been on a special diet for a while because of problems with his digestion, but the last week he was with me, I treated him to whatever he wanted = he would eat like there was no tomorrow and he threw up a couple of times because he ate so fast. When I made the final decision, I zoned out of my feelings and just went through the motions of existing. I held him in my arms when the vet came to the apartment and shaved his leg where the needle was to go in. I watched him do it and I held Ben as if I could will this not to happen, but I loved him too much, I wanted him to go to the Rainbow Bridge with his dignity intact. When it was over, I wrapped him in the old quilt, carried him downstairs and put him in the back seat of the vet's car. It had started to snow, the vet drove off and I screamed out loud until I couldn't scream anymore. The pain was unbelievable. I felt like I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move, grief swept over me like a physical being that invaded my heart and soul. Even though I had loved the other three pets I had before Ben = Nikki, Nugget, Chocks = there was something about Ben that stole my heart and soul from the moment I saw him.

A light went out of my life that day and my living has been in a dim world ever since. I fell into the rabbit hole that day and never completely crawled out. Eighteen years later, the grief and the tears and the sorrow and the longing for him is still raw and palpable. Time doesn't heal a loss = you put the grief in a place in your heart and soul where you can take it out every now and then to cry and grieve and long for him all over again and I don't apologize for those feelings today.

I had saved the ashes of his older brother Nugget and I took them and Ben's ashes and drove to Jekyll Island, Georgia and scattered them into the ocean. I had never take Ben or Nugget to the beach before and with the ashes, they both became a part of the endless cycle of the universe, forever in the tides that come and go on that particular beach.

When people think of me now as the person with "all the cats", they don't realize I had to rescue them, had to save them, just like I saved Ben. You see, saving their lives brings me peace, regardless of how the inevitable end is going to play out. The greater the love, the greater the grief.

So, as my years wind down and tomorrow is never promised to me, I know that I love my babies now and I loved my four babies back them. I have lost Beanie, Maggie and Topper in the past six years but I will never forget any of them. Death ends the life you had with them, but death cannot erase the love I shared with them while they were with me. My one prayer is that when I go to the Other Side, that God will grant me the right to go across the Bridge to be with my babies who wait for me there.

The light that went out of my life when each one of them passed away, will once again be bright and I will be with them for Eternity.

Benjamin, my beloved baby, one day I will see you again and once again we can walk by the Chattahoochee River like we used to and sit by the riverside and listen to the water as it laps up against the river bank, never to be parted again.