The Day that Pepper Died
Sida and I got Pepper 11 years ago. Her mother and father had seen how much I'd like their dog, Bella, and she just showed up with my then girlfriend at our apartment that day. And utter and total surprise. A true gift.
Sida had never really had a pet like a dog before and was immediately adamant that she wouldn't sleep on the bed with us. That probably lasted a few hours. I remember her making little sounds at the foot of the bed and she was immediately on my side of the bed and in my arms.
Her passing forces a reappraisal of the intervening years and forces the same sort of finality of letting go of past selves that are now amalgamated into the life I live now.
Pepper came into our life in a tumultuous time. Sida and I had just moved into our second apartment together. After a year living in Manayunk we were told of a guy renting another apartment in Lawncrest and the price was too good to pass up. Even back then in 2012 it was ridiculously cheap. I was fully in the throes of my burgeoning alcoholism. I never thought that looking back at the passage of 11 years would feel like such a distant memory. I was so young and immature then.
It wasn't long before she was a fixture in our lives, carried with us where we went. Sitting at home to be taken for a walk when I'd return from work late at night.
In that time we moved into our first home. She had three puppies when we got her pregnant by a friend's dog. She was there with me the week Sida went to training for her first new job, and subsequently my first bout with alcoholic withdrawal. I was so young then that I didn't even know that that was what it was. I spent the entire week peering over the side of our puke green gingham cloth sofa to pick up a bottle and lift it to my lips while she sidled up to my greasy body all week long. And she was there when we brought our first born child back home. She was there for weekend trips to see my folks and watch football. She'd spend her time chasing my mother's dogs in the backyard and chasing cats.
She got sick this week and very quickly declined. We knew she was getting older but after she had been treated for lyme's disease it appeared as though she regained her old vigor and had years left to go before her end would come. It was sudden to see her get sick this week and just not get better.
I am glad she got to see our family. Auggie is now about 3 and a half years old and six days from now Hunter will be 1. 11 years ago, when Pepper entered our lives I never could imagine where I would be now. A volunteer firefighter, married with a family of two. Working on three years sober from alcohol.
When a companion like that suddenly leaves your life it is hard not to look back at the years that passed with her. All of the things that happened to us. All of the things I did to myself. The man I have become and father I am trying to be. We're not often forced to look in to take the perspective like this all at once.
I am very sad now for the friend that I have lost, the family member that won't be here to see us forward. I miss her. I want to do her justice. I want so badly to unleash memories of her and walk through them to make sure that they are sequestered in my mind in the sheltered estuaries where the relentless of passage of time will leave them be.
I often say that anything that effects you like this and that is committed to memory never truly dies. These things seep into you, become you. You are all of these things passing as you go like an icebreaker through your life headlong with no truly peerless way to see what's ahead.
Pepper. I love you. I miss you horribly and hope that your passing wasn't in pain. You died at home with those who loved and cared for you. You will not be forgotten.