Can I tell you a little story? I am not a pet person. Not even a tiny little bit. I didn’t grow up in a house where dogs were the norm and my only experience with animals (beyond a barn cat) were neighborhood dogs that weren’t well cared for and got little attention. Until I met Josh.
Having grown up with animals his whole life, he told me pretty early in our relationship that we would have an inside dog. I had zero experience with animals in the house and knew absolutely nothing about caring for a pet. We had been married almost nine months when I picked an ad out of the newspaper on a Saturday morning and we drove several hours to pick her up the next afternoon. She was the runt of the litter. She slept on my lap the entire drive home, wearing a red, Hawaiian print collar that I wish we still had. We named her Jasmine’s Queen Beemer (Jasmine was her mom’s name and B was very clearly the “queen bee”).
Beemer was sneaky and destructive and moody. She could give you the cold shoulder like no one else I know. She slept in our bed for almost ten years and despite that fact that our mattress suffered greatly, I will never regret those midnight snuggles. She was the best big sister to our girls and they loved her fiercely.
We’ve known for quite some time that her health was deteriorating, but we did our best to care for her while ignoring the dwindling time we had left. Earlier this year, she all sorts of tests run at the vet and they confirmed that she had cancer. We didn’t have details because they couldn’t determine the type without doing major abdominal surgery and in her condition, it wasn’t recommended. We gave her medicine to keep her happy and pain free, but after a few months it was clear she wasn’t getting any better.
On Tuesday afternoon we cried a lot. I gave her a bath and we played in the yard. We laid on the couch under a quilt and she had bacon for dinner. On Wednesday, my sister came for a visit and took these beautiful photographs of her in our room. After she was too old to climb into our bed, she slept here in front of the bookcases and I will never look at that spot the same again. I laid in the floor that night and fed her pizza and later Josh lifted her into our bed and she stole all the covers. On Thursday, October 1st, we took the girls to school and then fell apart. She got excited about wearing her pink collar and I cried out of guilt. The vets and staff at our animal hospital were unbelievably kind and took such good care of her. And us. They gave us all the time we needed and we were able to spend the last hour of her life giving her belly rubs and telling her how much we love her. We took her home to the log house and buried her next to the garden shed, right where the sunset shines over the cotton field.
Our house is really weird now. It’s too clean and too quiet and it smells different. The girls still cry a lot and we are all very careful with our words. If you sent notes or cards, I put them in a safe place to read with the girls later. Sophie has drawn pictures of her and wrote her a song, but she doesn’t like to talk about it. Sometimes I swear I hear her feet or see her ghost around the corner and have to catch my breath.
We miss you terribly, B. You were the sweetest girl in the whole wide world.
I know we’re supposed to be talking about Bibles all month, so I’m going to thank you in advance for letting me take a little break today. I’ll be back on Monday with more pages and tutorials to round out the month!
