Honey

My therapist says I need to learn to let things go. And so, as my fingertips gently trace the engraved writing on the small, once-shiny oval, I close my eyes and remind myself that my memories can’t be taken from me. That letting go isn’t the tremendous betrayal my heart tells me it is. My fingers play with the red nylon thread fraying at the edge of the collar, and I notice how each is a slightly different shade. The tag catches the light and, even after all these years, glints briefly in the sunlight streaming through the window.

Though my feet don't move, my mind travels back to a different time; a time when I first noticed a sliver of light at the edge of the black curtain covering my life. An unfamiliar sensation overcame me, tingling in my fingers and toes. I hadn't felt it in so long that my brain struggled to identify it; like an acquaintance promising they know your name as they close their eyes and tap their chin. Excitement. Hope.

The unfamiliar feeling was brought to me courtesy a wriggling, silky-haired puppy. I had smiled for the first time in who knows how long as I knelt and she bounded up and around me like a spring popped out of a pen. I slipped the collar that I had nervously purchased around her neck; not even needing to unbuckle it. Clumsily I dodged her kisses and nips, marveling at how her breath could smell so foul but so sweet at the same time. Those who know will tell you a puppy's breath has a particular pungency.

I named her Honey. She vibrated with such excitement that it reminded me of a hive in springtime; thousands of bees buzzing and working side by side. She was a beautiful, deep shade of amber; like a brass pole in the middle of the ponies on a carousel. When I put it around her neck, the collar drooped like a society lady’s pearls, the tag threatening to fall underfoot. I had chuckled with real happiness, not my usual mirthless noise, and traded it out for a tiny bubblegum pink puppy collar. I set aside the red collar for when it could be worn safely.

Soon Honey’s pink collar began disappearing under her beautiful coat, like when I wear a tight, skinny headband on my long hair. “This is too small for you, girl,” I told her as I removed the pink collar. She seemed to appreciate the significance of the milestone as she proudly stood still for me to put her new collar on. I had splurged and ordered an engraved tag that said Honey on the front and ‘call my mom’ with my phone number on the back.

Honey was a ball of energy, as I knew she would be. She would wait by the back door every afternoon when it was time for our walk. How do dogs do that? Tell time, I mean. Honey had a human-like understanding of life I didn’t know could exist in a dog.

As active as she was, Honey knew how to relax too. I’ve never seen a dog that relished throw-pillows the way Honey did. She would spread out on the sofa; her head nestled softly on a pillow like I do when I have a good book to read. There had been a short period after I bought a new couch that I tried to outlaw four-legged friends on the furniture but that hadn’t lasted even a day. Honey quickly found her way back to her favorite spot, right next to me. Honey wasn’t just smart; lots of dogs are smart. She understood.

I don’t even realize I’m silently weeping until a tear drips onto my hand. My whole life has been a series of disappointments and sadness, even from the most objective of standpoints. But my heart aches in a way even I’ve never known. I just want Honey to come bounding through the door with one of her stuffies in her mouth, eager to show me her ‘kill’, tail wagging so wide her whole hind end joins in. With a long exhalation, I lower my hand to set the collar down but I find I can’t let it go. My fingers are gripping the collar so firmly my knuckles are turning white. Suddenly, I inhale a ragged breath and a choked sob escapes my lips. This collar is part of her. This collar is what I have left.

The last day she wore her red collar was deceptively beautiful. There was a soft breeze; sun rays filtered through the tall oaks lining the pathway to the river, birds twittered overhead. We always went for a walk along the river in the summer months. We came to the end of our walk and Honey sat in front of me to have her leash removed so she could swim at the dog beach, as she always did. As I unsnapped the leash, I patted her withers and ruffled her ears. She turned her appreciative face to me, tongue lolling out, as if to say, ‘can I go now mom?’ With a laugh I tapped her bottom, giving her the go ahead, and she raced across the gravelly sand to the beach. She traipsed delightedly through the shallows, snapping playfully at the water she splashed up. I slowly ambled towards her with the ball launcher I always took on our walks. This had been her favorite game of all time. I put the tennis ball in the basket of the plastic catapult and hurled it out into the river. Honey was after it like a shot, her strawberry blonde head bobbing in the water as she swam furiously for it.

She had just returned with the ball in her mouth, triumphant and dripping, ready to go again when we heard it. A shriek. Not a scream of surprise or delight; a guttural sound that you instinctively know signals terror. Both our heads whipped up, looking for the source of the cry. Honey’s ears instantly perked up as she took in everything around her; nose in the air, sniffing continuously. She saw it well before I did. It was the stiffening of her body that told me to look where she was looking. In the river, alarmingly near the middle, was a dark object that I soon realized was a small head struggling to stay afloat. There was no splashing, just the occasional waving of a hand. At the shoreline was a fully clothed woman in the water up to her knees frantically screaming a name over and over again, ‘GRAYSON! GRAYSON!!’.’

I hadn’t even fully registered the implications when Honey tore away from me, sprinting full speed toward the shoreline and the child in the river beyond. She had flown into the water then, no playful splashing, just concentration and intensity. She swam with a ferocity I had never seen before, steadily nearing the child that was floundering in the water. I only allowed myself to exhale as I saw Honey turn around and start paddling back, a dark-haired head hovering just above her shoulder. As she drew closer, I saw the child clinging to her neck, burying his face into her wet coat.

The child’s mother rushed to him, crying uncontrollably. As she reached him, she grasped him by his shoulders. With both hands she smoothed his hair and face, checking him all over as if making sure he was all there before crushing him to her chest. Only at that point did I notice that the child was fully clothed, including sandals. After an enthusiastic full body shake, Honey had sat happily at my feet, panting and watching the exchange.

Slowly the panic began to ebb from the mother’s voice and after a pause she took a deep breath, knelt down and asked, ‘Why did you go in the water, Gray?’

‘I dropped my fidget off the end of the dock,’ he whispered. ‘ I wanted to know if it would float.’ He stole a look at his mother then, embarrassment in his face, ‘It didn’t. I fell in when I reached for it,’ he finished.

‘You really scared me, Gray,’ the mother said in a serious tone. The boy’s eyes filled with tears. Tousling his hair his mother said in a lighter voice with a grateful laugh, ‘Well! I’m so glad that the only damage is a lost fidget and some wet clothes. Let’s get you dry!’

‘Dad’s all wet too,’ Grayson said quietly as if in defense of his need for dry clothes.

‘Where do you want to go for lunch, Gray?’ she asked as she turned to walk back to the car. And then she came to a complete stop, holding up one finger like a traffic cop. ‘Wait.’ she said processing his statement. ‘What did you say?’ she inquired as she slowly turned back around. Grayson repeated himself.

‘What?’ she exclaimed again, disbelief defining the word. ‘He said he would stay with the car! He can’t even really swim! Why would he do that?’’

‘He came to get me,’ Grayson explained reluctantly, staring at his feet. ‘He saw me fall in and came to get me.’ She quickly cast a fearful look back at the river. Honey and I followed suit. The river is known for its currents and eddies and there isn’t a human swimming beach until much further down river. In all truth, the ‘dog beach’ isn’t a city-sanctioned site but really just a sandy spot where we all turn our dogs loose to splash and swim. The area is used more for fishing than anything else.

The father’s head was just barely visible in the middle of the water, much further downriver than Grayson had been. Before I even fully realized it, Honey was trotting purposefully down the rocky shoreline beyond the beach, searching for the best spot to enter the water, eyes trained on the struggling figure in the river. And then she found it and launched herself into the water, steadily stroking yet a second time toward the middle.

I couldn’t know if it was my imagination or not but was she swimming slower than she had been? It seemed it took her longer to fight to get to the man than it did the boy and when she did, she vanished from view. I gasped as I saw the man was sitting higher in the water. He was using Honey as a buoy and was pushing her down into the water to raise himself up!

‘No!’ I screamed, ‘no, no, no! Let go of her!’ I cried with desperate insistence, getting louder and more shrill with each protestation. ‘He’s going to drown her!’ I said in a crazed panic to no one in particular as I rushed to the shoreline. Then I saw Honey’s black nose breach the surface, the highest point as she steadily swam on.

Just then a boat had cut in my line of sight, severing my visual connection to Honey. It was motoring out to pull the man aboard and also completely block my view. I ran into the water then fully dressed, as the woman missing her child had. I kept repeating ‘no, no, no’ to myself like a mantra, hysteria gathering into a storm within me, threatening to break loose. The boat finally turned in the water and I saw two men hoisting the nearly drowned man onboard, holding his belt loops and dragging him over the side. He flopped into the boat unceremoniously and disappeared from sight. Scattered cheers erupted among the few people that had gathered along the shore. Most were completely unaware there was a dog that was still lost.

Frantically, I continued to search the surface of the water, desperate to find my sweet girl. As his partner tended to the rescued man in the bottom of the boat, the other man scanned the surface of the water too, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun glaring off the water. On shore the few remaining observers dispersed, the excitement gone, the rescue over. After completing a few circles in search of Honey, the boat returned to shore carrying the man. Only the man. Grayson and his parents had of course expressed their thanks and gratitude for Honey’s watchfulness and bravery, though clearly preoccupied by the shock of their own near-death experience. I didn’t mind; I was completely preoccupied with finding Honey.

The men with the boat had gladly turned around in response to my frenzied pleas to go back out to search for Honey. We searched until nightfall. I called her name until I lost my voice, and then I used a hoarse whisper. We went to the opposite bank and I determinedly fought my way through the underbrush, hoping to find her resting and waiting for recovery. Eventually, I listened to the urgings of those around me and went home. It suddenly occurred to me that she might find her own way home. Yes, I had reasoned with unrealistic optimism, she might be waiting for me at home! At some point I fell into a fitful sleep on my couch with my phone in my hand.

She wasn’t found until the next day. She washed ashore in the early morning hours a quarter of a mile downriver, and a kind soul had kept her body for me, calling the number on her tag.

I don’t remember much in those days after Honey died. I remember cradling her body to me, her beautiful ginger locks dirty and still wet, covered in gravel and sand. I sobbed over her, grieving her loss with a fervor that’s hard to describe. She was so pure. She loved everyone and everything. I see-sawed between anger at Grayson and his family to anger at the men for not having grabbed her the minute she got near the boat. There were two of them! Why couldn’t one man have helped her? I even wrestled with anger toward Honey. Why did she have to be so willing to jump in to save people we don’t even know? Then my anger would shift into guilt; deep shame that I was blaming my beautiful dog for her own death. Of course she had jumped in to help, she always looked to help the humans around her. Most of all I had anger toward myself. Sometimes the self-loathing would be more than I could bear. The overwhelming sense of loss would wash over me then and the pain would burst out deep from within me in silent, wracked sobs.

Even now, I think the cruelest trick grief plays is in the early mornings. There is a split second after waking up that I remain unaware of all that has happened and then just as quickly I remember and it comes crashing down on me all over again. She’s buried in a green field with wild flowers now; her grave is marked with a small stone with her name carved in it. And I have her red collar. And perhaps I will learn to let things go as I’ve been counseled. But not this. I’ll keep her collar forever.