"An Ode To Callie"

By Hal Cicero

I’ve stared at your picture for a while now. How hollow I am.

How I’m reminded of how hollow it’s all been for a while now, in the quiet spaces outside of the good parts that will continue to come, even with tragedy.

I will always admit it isn’t all bad. But when it’s bad, oh, how hollow I am.

It made me cry then. It still does now.

How happy you were. How giving. How present and vigilant with tragedy, with loss.

With our Dad. Yours, too, as you reveled in the way he looked at you through your tens of whiskers and furry brows. 

You were, and are, a memento of the past—a sunlit echo. You ran with me as a child, and ran with me to make me feel like a child again after wooden stairs, big yards, and when the growing pains finally stopped.

In my legs, naturally. In the spaces where you, with your sweet, sweet face and dry nose, and Dad have carved out pieces of my heart as you both moved on?

The aches never let up, Callie, but those pieces you’ve taken were always yours. 

I knew they’d go with you; I only suppose I never fully (and never would have fully) prepared for the growing pains.

The hurt.

At least one of us has been shown mercy. You deserved it, though. Pain-free. In some higher, brighter place, back with Dad again. There is relief, I admit.

Still.

It hasn’t been easy, and losing you hasn’t made it any easier. Far from it, even if a small piece of me knew. 

Back in February, back home, attempting to coerce you off your cushioned perch on the couch and into my room, where the carpet awaited. 

The couch must have been a sanctuary for you, and you certainly didn’t move, but the carpet was enough comfort for my selfishness of wanting you to sleep with me at night.

I’d patted your head and told you how good a dog you’d been. I told you to keep being good, even though it always came easily to you.

It should come to us all in that way.

Saying goodbye was like closing the blinds, never to look through the window again—only the memory and the feeling of what the view had looked like, what had happened there, was left.

I believe the view through that covered window pane is that of our backyard. The one in the house where Dad was last. The memory, summer. Evening, after he had finished mowing and you had been let out to traverse the big yard once again.

Your kingdom of sticks and blades of grass, hung vintage Edison bulbs in the trees, and the noisy, lit-up baseball field just behind the big grass-stained white fence.

I wonder if you are both there now. 

A carefully hand and paw-picked heaven. Yours and Dad’s sanctuary, waiting, ever-basking in that warm, effortless essence of home.

Back again, placed perfectly into our old life. Of yours, and ours, where I wasn’t so alone, and Mom’s eyes still lit up when she tasted something new. 

You were a whisper of the old times, memories woven into your gold, now never to be seen or heard again. 

I suppose I can’t blame us for who we’ve become. I suppose sometimes, the boat’s anchor drags everything in its wake—and I suppose we’ll never stop looking back.

Goodnight, Callie. Goodbye, Callie.

Tell him I love him in your own little way. 

What a good dog. How strange, that is all you were.

By Hal Cicero