BY KELLY HAGEN
Dad, why do our pets have to die? Will Sage die someday, too?
- JellyBean, daughter
So, I have a daughter, and she feels feelings more intensely than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s been that way since the day I met her, which was her first day. She was born at 10:10 p.m. on a Monday, and immediately started screaming at me.
She’s mellowed out on the whole screaming thing in the last nine years. Not a lot, but somewhat.
Anyway, she’s definitely an empath. She has been mentioning “our dog” since she first started talking. She’s referring to a basset hound named Boof. (Yes, I realize that is an unfortunate name. I let him pick out his own name when I adopted him, and that’s what he said. He may have been trying to say “Bruce.”)
I adopted Boof from a shelter in Dickinson, North Dakota, in 2006 when I was a single-male homeowner who had given up on finding anyone to love me but still wanted to share my house with something that wasn’t a ghost. Boof fit the bill. He was my best friend. We had a lot of the same interests. Napping and drooling, mostly.
Then I met our sweet Annette, we dated awhile, I proposed, and she moved into the house with me and Boof. We got married, bought a new house and had a baby. That was my daughter JellyBean (not her real name), and suddenly there was four of us in the house.
However, when my daughter was only three months old, Boof was out in the living room where JellyBean (again, not her real name) was sitting in her bouncer on the floor. Boof got up, walked over to the bouncer and licked my daughter’s face, then walked out into our kitchen and fell over, dead.
So, they didn’t get a lot of time to get to know each other. I, on the other hand, was destroyed. I can remember rocking my daughter to sleep and ugly-crying about my dog. Because I feel feelings, too.
We never really talked about Boof as she grew up, because the topic of basset hounds rarely comes up for conversation in our house. But, somehow, my daughter always talked about “our dog,” and just instinctively knew about him.
One day a few years ago, while getting out Christmas decorations, she found a Christmas ornament shaped like a basset hound and said it was Boof. Another time, she found a box of Boof’s things that I’d packed away, and pulled out his collar and cried the hardest I’ve ever seen her cry. She was so sad.
So, I did the only sensible thing and immediately adopted us a new dog. He’s a corgi named Sage, and my daughter regularly calls him “Baby” and pretty much tortures him with hugs and kisses.
She just got a DVD of the movie “A Dog’s Purpose.” It’s about a dog named Bailey who grows up on a farm with a young boy but dies when the boy goes off to college, and is reincarnated a few times until he is born a different dog that finds his way back to the boy, who is now an adult. My daughter watches this movie and cries and OOL’s (that’s going “OHHHHH!” out loud because something is cute) throughout the whole thing. It’s very endearing.
So, I haven’t actually been asked the question yet. I’m waiting, and I’m preparing. But since I write this parenting column, I thought I might test drive some talking points on all of you. Sound good? Here goes.
Yes, Sage will die one day. But, just like in your movie, that doesn’t mean we evaporate completely. Our memories stay here, and the influence we’ve had on others remains. Because you love Sage, and Sage loves you, that feeling stays with you for all time.
That’s the beautiful part of life, that it’s limited, and you only have so much time to make an impact. Use that. Make an impact on others, love others so much that they carry you with them as long as they will live. That’s Sage’s purpose, and that is yours and mine.
Kelly Hagen is a former newspaper journalist, a writer and communications professional. He lives in Bismarck, ND, with his wife, Annette, and their two young children. If you have a question you’d like to Ask A Dad, send an e-mail to kelly.hagen@gmail.com.
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