My Funeral
Farnsworth was a big yellow Lab. A grand old Labrador like you used to see, with no throatiness and a chest that held a heart big enough to squeeze oranges. He played dumb all his life– he’d just put his head down and plow on with whatever, following the theory that no one could spank him hard enough to matter anyway. But he could open drawers with his teeth, if the boys were foolish enough to hide Easter candy; and we suspect that he could work combination locks with his tongue, though we never caught him at it. He would just set his chin on the edge of your bed and, if you weren’t fully conscious, deposit his full length beneath the comforter by a feat of peristalsis. He never sat on the furniture, unless he thought you wanted your seat kept warm, but once in a chair, it took Daniel Webster himself to talk him out of it again.
One day he came home, demonstrating the gentle mouth for which the breed is famous, with an un-damaged package of frozen chicken some optimist had probably set out to thaw for supper. He was never so overtly useful again. But we slept with him, walked with him, ate, swam and sang with him, cursed at and cried on him. He and I were exactly the same speed afoot (in my youth) and when I would chase him, neither could I catch him, nor could he get away. It worked out to my advantage that he slowed down when he looked back over his shoulder to see if I was still there. So Farney developed a fine sensibility about whether I was really mad enough for it to matter. It’s good that we had no near neighbors, because I learned to fly into a towering rage between heartbeats as a way of convincing him that when I said, "COME!" I meant, "Come." If he didn’t think I was angry enough to chase him down and beat him half to death with his own hind leg, he’d just drift over the horizon in pursuit of his hobbies– he was very interested in dog breeding.
But I suspect that it was garbage-ripping that finally did the old fellow in. He had one of those good stomachs that retain what they are given. Not like a cocaine-sniffing poodle or society spaniel. Farney’s stomach was his finest part. When he got on in years, the girls got harder to catch, but road kill and trash bags were always of accessible interest. To tell the truth, the most obvious difference between good, old Farnsworth and a hyena was the stripe of hair down the hyena’s back. And, of course, Farney had papers. He could sort onions from a platter of stew, leave the dish too clean to draw flies, and set all the bits of onion in a heap, sans gravy, on the side. But he never did see any real objection to eating the plastic wrap along with the whatever-it-held. His stomach would deal with the fine points of digestion and the unneeded part was passed out on the morning walk.
In any case, it was a Sunday morning in October, when the sassafras was yellow-mottled- purple, that we woke to discover the old boy had shucked his mortal coil...on the oriental, naturally. He had always savoir-faire. But he had been gimping along merrily enough right to the end, arthritis and all, so the wife and I guessed that neither of us could want a better way to go (but not on the oriental, she begged). I thought I’d better do something to remove him to a more suitable location before the children woke, but a ninety-pound Lab with rigor mortis lacks the handle God was thoughtful enough to put on a suitcase. I finally maneuvered him onto a throw rug and travoised him to the front yard, a fine and private place out where we live.
The yard of every house in which a proper family ever lived has it’s graves, merging back into the general mold– little crosses made of popsicle sticks, low mounds planted with beautiful broken glass, shrubs and perennials the color of fur and feather. There are beaks and bones of every description nourishing future generations in the earth. One of the things pets can do is to offer first, practice in loving, and then, practice in losing, which is the same. If they are lucky, children learn about birth and death from animals first.
In the cool morning air it was a treat to dig the soft earth. One by one, the children came out, sniffling, and my father and mother arrived, just an hour and a half early for brunch, as was their custom. Clouds drew near and veiled the scene with a mist of fine droplets as I dug on. I stood in the center of the excavation, ringed by mourners, and as I sank gradually below knee depth, I had a sense of my own future.
My father, now no longer with us, was feeling his own mortality and made suitable comments on final things: the pleasure of being with family at a time like this; the satisfaction of spending forever in one’s own garden; how Farney had been like a brother and son to all of us; what intelligence he had shown in his pilferings; how his essential decency allowed him to violate territorial rights and bounds of canine decorum, without ever getting in a fight with lesser breeds without the law; how he never bit, not even when attacked by other male dogs, finally outraged beyond endurance by his leg lifting, bowl licking, female sniffing; how handsome he had been in his youth, how strong in his prime, how enduring in old age; what a good companion, what a sympathetic listener, comfort to kin and protection from strangers. We knew he would go to heaven, despite certain Hindu tendencies in our family toward re-incarnation, because he had lived a good life, filling every corner of his allotted envelope and could not return to a lesser existence, nor was their a more comfortable and fulfilling role for him to play in any other form. Only heaven awaits an old soul.
When it was dug, the grave looked as if it had been measured for Dumbo the Flying Elephant– or his impact site. But Farney’s curled form nestled snugly in the bottom, asleep as usual, while I worked. We settled on a red tree peony to plant over him the following spring, because hamburger was his favorite color. None of us could bear it when the first shovel of loam was gently laid on his haunches and we left his head uncovered as long as possible. I worked quickly to build his mound and then we all went in to the funeral brunch my wife had been preparing.
He was the sweetest thief anybody would ever care to know. As we communed around the dining table, it struck me, how the damn dog had just had the funeral I always wished would someday be mine.
One day he came home, demonstrating the gentle mouth for which the breed is famous, with an un-damaged package of frozen chicken some optimist had probably set out to thaw for supper. He was never so overtly useful again. But we slept with him, walked with him, ate, swam and sang with him, cursed at and cried on him. He and I were exactly the same speed afoot (in my youth) and when I would chase him, neither could I catch him, nor could he get away. It worked out to my advantage that he slowed down when he looked back over his shoulder to see if I was still there. So Farney developed a fine sensibility about whether I was really mad enough for it to matter. It’s good that we had no near neighbors, because I learned to fly into a towering rage between heartbeats as a way of convincing him that when I said, "COME!" I meant, "Come." If he didn’t think I was angry enough to chase him down and beat him half to death with his own hind leg, he’d just drift over the horizon in pursuit of his hobbies– he was very interested in dog breeding.
But I suspect that it was garbage-ripping that finally did the old fellow in. He had one of those good stomachs that retain what they are given. Not like a cocaine-sniffing poodle or society spaniel. Farney’s stomach was his finest part. When he got on in years, the girls got harder to catch, but road kill and trash bags were always of accessible interest. To tell the truth, the most obvious difference between good, old Farnsworth and a hyena was the stripe of hair down the hyena’s back. And, of course, Farney had papers. He could sort onions from a platter of stew, leave the dish too clean to draw flies, and set all the bits of onion in a heap, sans gravy, on the side. But he never did see any real objection to eating the plastic wrap along with the whatever-it-held. His stomach would deal with the fine points of digestion and the unneeded part was passed out on the morning walk.
In any case, it was a Sunday morning in October, when the sassafras was yellow-mottled- purple, that we woke to discover the old boy had shucked his mortal coil...on the oriental, naturally. He had always savoir-faire. But he had been gimping along merrily enough right to the end, arthritis and all, so the wife and I guessed that neither of us could want a better way to go (but not on the oriental, she begged). I thought I’d better do something to remove him to a more suitable location before the children woke, but a ninety-pound Lab with rigor mortis lacks the handle God was thoughtful enough to put on a suitcase. I finally maneuvered him onto a throw rug and travoised him to the front yard, a fine and private place out where we live.
The yard of every house in which a proper family ever lived has it’s graves, merging back into the general mold– little crosses made of popsicle sticks, low mounds planted with beautiful broken glass, shrubs and perennials the color of fur and feather. There are beaks and bones of every description nourishing future generations in the earth. One of the things pets can do is to offer first, practice in loving, and then, practice in losing, which is the same. If they are lucky, children learn about birth and death from animals first.
In the cool morning air it was a treat to dig the soft earth. One by one, the children came out, sniffling, and my father and mother arrived, just an hour and a half early for brunch, as was their custom. Clouds drew near and veiled the scene with a mist of fine droplets as I dug on. I stood in the center of the excavation, ringed by mourners, and as I sank gradually below knee depth, I had a sense of my own future.
My father, now no longer with us, was feeling his own mortality and made suitable comments on final things: the pleasure of being with family at a time like this; the satisfaction of spending forever in one’s own garden; how Farney had been like a brother and son to all of us; what intelligence he had shown in his pilferings; how his essential decency allowed him to violate territorial rights and bounds of canine decorum, without ever getting in a fight with lesser breeds without the law; how he never bit, not even when attacked by other male dogs, finally outraged beyond endurance by his leg lifting, bowl licking, female sniffing; how handsome he had been in his youth, how strong in his prime, how enduring in old age; what a good companion, what a sympathetic listener, comfort to kin and protection from strangers. We knew he would go to heaven, despite certain Hindu tendencies in our family toward re-incarnation, because he had lived a good life, filling every corner of his allotted envelope and could not return to a lesser existence, nor was their a more comfortable and fulfilling role for him to play in any other form. Only heaven awaits an old soul.
When it was dug, the grave looked as if it had been measured for Dumbo the Flying Elephant– or his impact site. But Farney’s curled form nestled snugly in the bottom, asleep as usual, while I worked. We settled on a red tree peony to plant over him the following spring, because hamburger was his favorite color. None of us could bear it when the first shovel of loam was gently laid on his haunches and we left his head uncovered as long as possible. I worked quickly to build his mound and then we all went in to the funeral brunch my wife had been preparing.
He was the sweetest thief anybody would ever care to know. As we communed around the dining table, it struck me, how the damn dog had just had the funeral I always wished would someday be mine.