How To Save a Life

I was searching on the net, just seeing if and where my name popped up and I came across this past blog post from My Space. I decided to transfer it here because, A) who knows how long before My Space purges old profiles and B) I'm really proud of this post. Also, it's partly about my Father and anytime I can talk about him is fine by me:

Meaning and symbolism can be found wherever you look for it. You just have to be open to the possibility that life is not just a random ordering of events and that there is symmetry both big and small in everything that happens.

In a shade over a month, my Father will have been gone twelve years. It seems like just yesterday we were driving up the coast to catch a baseball game or he and my family dropping me off at college, saying goodbye. I can still hear his voice choke when I called and told him I would be following in his footsteps at his alma mater. Time can fly by in an instant or can crawl across an eternity.

Everything we are in the present is made up of everything we were in the past. Each experience, each moment, each scintilla of time that has come before is what makes up each one of us at this moment. Remembering the past and honoring those ghosts are important because whether good or bad it is who we are. As I sit here writing this I am honoring the ghosts of my past as earlier today I made the decision to put Buddy to rest and end his suffering as cancer ravaged his body as it had my Father twelve years earlier.

The number that pops into my head on this day full of meaning is 25. My parents were both 25 when they got married, I graduated Arizona State at the age of 25, 3 months after my Father died and it was 25 years ago last week that my parents bought me a beagle that I named Leon. He was a Christmas present and Leon is Noel spelled backwards so the name was appropriate. On Christmas Eve, my Father asked me to go get something out of the back seat of his car. There was a box there with an 8 week old beagle with a bow around his neck.

It became obvious to everyone that I was too young to have a dog and Leon was more than I could handle. We weren't pet people to begin with and Leon was never a part of the family like he should have been. He spent his days alone wandering the backyard and his nights in the garage sleeping on the cold cement floor. It was no surprise that he was taken from me before his time when he was only two years old.

I remember that day as if it happened yesterday. We lived in the corner of a cul-de-sac that fed out to a six lane road. I was out in the street playing kickball with a bunch of the other kids when the two kids next door were playing in their backyard and threw their ball over our fence. They went to get it and left the gate open. Leon came bounding out and started heading toward the deadly road at the end of the block. I immediately gave chase but as a two year old dog who had never been trained, Leon wasn't about to take any orders from me. It was late in the day and there were lots of cars on the road. I chased him towards that street hoping he would either turn the corner or stop but instead he ran straight out and the right front tire of a woman's car collided with his face and tossed him like a cork.

My parents refused to get me another dog and rightfully so. I vowed right then and there that as soon as I had a house of my own I would get another beagle and one week after I bought my first house, that's exactly what I did.

A week after I moved in, I fulfilled that promise. I found a breeder and he had one beagle left, the runt of the litter. I said I would take him. I can't ever remember my Father calling me by my name. I'm sure he did, I just don't remember. What I do remember is that he always called me Buddy. That is one of the most important memories of my past and since it was my Father who bought me my first beagle there was only one name it could ever be. He was named before he was ever born, before I ever bought that first house. Everyday that Buddy was in my life, a piece of my Father was too.

I enjoy burning candles in my living room and I have a nice set of aromatherapy pillars that I have been burning for awhile. I didn't think it had any significance at the time but about two months ago I decided to burn the love candle. Every time I sat in that room, even if only for half an hour I lit that candle and let the scent wash over the room as the shadow of the flame danced on the walls. Last night before I went out, the candle extinguished itself. It had reached its end and had no more light to give. In the back of my mind I knew Buddy's spark was nearing its end too.

When I was 11, I sat and watched the life drift out of Leon's eyes. When I was 24, I stood at my Father's side and watched as the fire died in his and today I stood for a third time and watched as a link to my past was taken away from me.

I've spent a lot of time today finding meaning and symbolism in this story I've related. There's a saying that the world moves in mysterious ways and that has never been more evident than on my ride home from the vet. My satellite radio was set to The Coffee House and there were three songs I heard on the way home. The first was Sweet Baby James by James Taylor….Goodnight, you moonlight ladies; Rockabye sweet baby James . . .Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose; Won't you let me go down in my dreams And rockabye sweet baby James. The second song that played was Shine by David Gray….So we'll walk down the shoreline One last time together Feel the wind blow our wanderin' hearts Like a feather But who knows what's waiting In the wings of time Dry your eyes We gotta go where we can shine. Incredibly, the last song to play as I got back home was How to Save a Life by The Fray….Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend Somewhere along in the bitterness And I would have stayed up with you all night Had I known how to save a life.

I sat in the car and waited for the song to finish.

Buddy allowed me to keep a piece of my Father with me everyday and ironically,it was my life that was saved.