Once upon a time there was a little girl named Ella who was five years old. She lived with her Daddy and Mommy and younger sister Molly and their dog, Sadie, in a city called Columbia which was in a state named South Carolina. Ella and Molly went to school every morning where they and their friends learned something new each day.
Her grandmothers Nana and Naynay sometimes came to pick up Ella and Molly from their school in the afternoon. Nana and Naynay always asked the little girls about their day at school.
Each week Ella told Nana and Naynay the letter of the alphabet she was learning until finally she had finished all the letters and could write the whole alphabet. Nana and Naynay were so excited to hear this news! The teacher had also taught Ella how to sound out the letters she was learning to write.
One of Ella and Molly’s favorite books was the book about Dick and Jane that Naynay read to them in the car on their way home from school.
Now Ella tried to follow along to understand how the alphabet letters made words. She wanted to read the book by herself when the magic came to her one afternoon last week.
The kitten’s picture was a hint, but five-year-old Ella wasn’t focused on it. Instead, she looked intently at the bold letters below: P-u-f-f. She said each letter and sounded it out like she had been taught in her class at school. Puh-uh-ff.
Puff!! she exclaimed with a look on her face that was unforgettable. Wonder. Surprise. Joy. In amazement she looked at her grandmother and asked, Naynay, how did I know that word?
Nana and Naynay were thrilled and told Ella she had begun to solve the mysteries of the universe because she was learning to read. Since everyone was smiling and happy, Molly was happy, too.
Ella closed the book, still smiling, not really concerned what mysteries of the universe meant, but asked if anyone brought cookies.
Fifteen years ago this Easter my mother was in a secured memory care unit of the Atria Westchase assisted living complex in Houston, Texas. Pretty and I had recently bought a second home in Montgomery, Texas, so I could be closer to Mom as her dementia progressed; she lost that battle two years later, but on that Easter Sunday in 2010 I arrived in time for a chapel service before lunch with my mom. After lunch, well, here’s what happened…
The traditional Easter egg hunt came to us mid-afternoon through the children of the staff members. The day was beautiful, and the fenced courtyard area was the perfect setting for a party. Those in our lunch group pushed their walkers or were wheeled outside into the bright sunlight, those who could sat in the Adirondack chairs under the portico. I met three other daughters who were visiting their mothers that day which made me thankful I was there with my mother, too.
The Hispanic women who were the caregivers for the memory care unit brought their children to enjoy the search for the pastel colored plastic eggs filled with candy in the tranquil setting of the facility’s outdoors. Eggs were hidden everywhere, including on and around the residents. Jim, a tall sad unshaven man who never spoke and struggled to move, opened the chocolate egg Rosa placed in his shirt pocket; he ate the candy before the kids arrived. No one tried to stop him including my mother who in days of yore would have surely reprimanded him in her best elementary school teacher voice.
The small group of children burst into the courtyard with an exuberance all youngsters bring to filling an Easter basket. Ages ranged from four to twelve, with one six-month-old baby girl held by her mother. They were dressed in their Sunday best. Little boys wore ties with their jackets, little girls wore pretty spring dresses. It could’ve been a movie set, I thought, because they were strikingly beautiful children. They flew around grabbing eggs with gusto as their baskets filled quickly. They were noisy, laughing, talking – incredibly alive.
It was the resurrection. For a few brief minutes, the stones were rolled away from the minds buried deep in the tombs of the bodies that kept them hidden. The children raced around the residents searching for treasures, exclaiming with delight when one was discovered. One little boy overlooked a blue egg under a wheel chair, and my mother tapped his shoulder to point it out to him. He was elated and flashed a brilliant smile at her. She responded with a look of pure delight. The smiles and the murmurings of the elderly were clear signs of their obvious joy that proclaimed the reality of Easter in their minds in those moments. Hallelujah. We were all risen.
Memories were made and lost that afternoon. The children who ran to find eggs among the old people in the place where their mothers worked were unlikely to forget this day. Years from now some will tell the stories of the Easter Egg Hunt with the Ancient Ones. The stories will be as different as their own journeys will take them. For my mother and her friends, no stories will be told because they won’t remember. My mother doesn’t know I was there for her on Easter this year which is not unexpected. But I remember I was, and it is enough for both of us.
I was born on another Easter Sunday morning in April, 1946, and that makes the year 2010 my sixty-fourth Easter. I recollect a few of the earliest Easters from my childhood: sacred religious days for my Southern Baptist family that rarely missed a worship service on any Sunday of the year but never at Christmas or Easter. I also remember having a hard time finding eggs in the church hunts. My baskets never runneth over. But to be honest, in recent years Easter Sundays had been difficult to distinguish from any other day of the week.
When I moved away from my family in Texas in my early twenties to explore my sexual identity, I didn’t know I’d be gone for forty years. I also had no way of knowing one of the costs of my freedom from family togetherness was my absence from family rituals. Distance, travel time, money, job obligations, girlfriends—these were the obstacles I had to overcome for visits home. Or maybe they were just excuses. I usually made the trip home at Christmas and less frequently one more time in the summer. But never for Easter.
This Easter was special for me because it was a day with no excuses necessary. I shared a Sunday sundae with my mother for lunch today at a table neither of us could have envisioned a few years before. Today was for the two of us, and if there were barriers between us that once seemed too impenetrable, they were now lost in the cobwebs of time.
We were all risen, indeed.
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My divorce from the politics and religion of the Southern Baptist denomination took decades, but I am grateful for the biblical stories I learned in Sunday School about resurrection because I continued to believe in the power of hope I experienced even in the midst of personal despair on an Easter Sunday afternoon in Texas when the children came to play.
(This post is an excerpt from my third book I’ll Call It like I See It)
The exam room was smaller than most, no frills, stark white like every other doctor’s office I’d ever been in – the chair was a classic stackable with no arms. I imagined a long uncomfortable wait as the friendly masked doctor’s assistant waltzed cheerily out of the room after taking my vital signs, leaving me with the sunny parting words: the doctor will be right in. I was dubious, of course, but my first visit to this gastroenterology practice deserved an open mind.
To my surprise the door opened almost as soon as she closed it, and a young masked doctor entered pushing a computer sitting on a tall desktop that rolled. He squeezed his equipment into the tiny room, rolled to a stop in front of me and closed the door.
He had the same positive energy his assistant had as we began to discuss my health concerns which were, in my mind at least, unremarkable. He tapped computer keys as we talked for a few minutes. During a lull in the conversation I asked him how long he had been a practicing physician.
“Twenty years,” he replied.
“Gosh,” I said. “You look very young in that mask. Plus you’re so cheerful while we’re talking about bowel movements which I assume must be the topic of most of your patient interviews. I admire your attitude.”
He seemed pleased about the compliment, murmuring a thank you. Then he motioned to an exam table opposite my chair and asked me if I thought I could get on it. I assured him I could. I was, however, grateful for the two steps at the bottom of the table and began my climb which must have taken longer than I imagined because he chose those moments to ask me if I was retired, what I had done, what I was doing now. I answered in halting sentences that didn’t sound like me at all, I thought, but I was focused on the ascent to the exam table which I finally accomplished.
As I was settling in a prone position, the young doctor said, “Well, you’ve had a good ride. Yes,” he continued as he checked my heart and lungs, “I hope when I’m 74 I can say the same thing. Well, I’ve had a good ride.”
I concentrated on breathing in and out…
Pretty was waiting for me when I joined her in the car. When I told her what the doctor said about my “good ride,” she rolled her eyes. That’s Pretty for you – she never tries to rain on a parade. I believe her comment was “whatever.”
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I published this piece four years ago and still laugh when I think about the gastroenterologist behind the mask. Years later I heard our son Drew echo the same sentiments about someone’s passing. Well, he said, they had a good ride. When I think about it as I enter the final year of my seventies this month, I have had quite the ride, and I’ve learned a few truths along the way.
“No matter where I rode to, that’s where I was. The ride isn’t over for me, but it’s slowing down. Choices. Trade-offs. Chance. Timing. Priorities. Obsession. Conviction. Change. Challenges. Love. Sex. Ambition. Death. Loss. Grief. Joy. Pride. Exhilaration. The ride took me to all of these places in no apparent order and, often, more than one at the same time. What I found was that I was always there. Where am I now that I need me? I’m here, just as you are. Don’t wait for the ride – don’t hope for the ride. Saddle up now, and embrace the journey. Celebrate yourself for who you are this day. Along the way, remember to try an outrageous act or two. You may find that your world is not quite the same.”
We are their angels on earth who love them and help them when it’s time to cross the Rainbow Bridge. We are all on our own little trek passing through and lucky to find helpers as we go.
My cousin Nita in Texas read about Spike’s passing last week and sent me these words of comfort and hope: we are all on our own little trek passing through and lucky to find helpers as we go.
Pretty and I thank everyone for your love and support of our family in our sorrow. Our wish for you tonight is that you have been lucky enough to find helpers for your journey when sadness, disappointments, unspeakable losses make this little trek seem impossible to endure.
We’re in this life together; thank you for reaching out to us.
On Thursday, March 27th., Pretty and I lost our beloved Texas dog Spike – not totally unexpectedly because he was old for a big dog, yet somewhat of a surprise because he had been in a slow decline for a long while before suddenly finding movement almost impossible Thursday morning. He told me and Pretty he was ready to go with his soulful big brown eyes. That afternoon an angel of mercy came to our home to help ease his passing. Our family has lost a cornerstonethat cannot be replaced.
In January, 2022, I published the “Spike Story.”
When my cousin Martin saw Spike for the first time he said, “Sheila, that ain’t nothing but a cur dog. Plain as day.”
That was in the spring of 2012, the year my two mothers died within two weeks of each other. I was a motherless child by any definition at the end of April, the month Spike appeared on Worsham Street in Texas as a motherless cur dog which according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition, and my cousin Martin, meant he was a mongrel or inferior dog – surly or cowardly.
When that cur dog showed up on Worsham Street in front of our house, Pretty and I had four other dogs: Annie, Red, Chelsea and Ollie. I tried to convince my neighbors across the street to keep him, but both of them had cats as well as dogs plus jobs that required their daily presence. I was a stay at home writer. My neighbor Lisa and I tried to find his owner for several days but finally realized someone had dumped him in our neighborhood so he belonged to Worsham Street. I called Pretty to talk to her about him – she was working and living most of the time in South Carolina while I had been in Texas to take care of my mother – and since we split the four dogs into two separate households – what was one more?
At first Spike was skittish around Red, Annie and me. He preferred to stay in the yard, but one night the rains came; I saw him sitting on the back porch looking at Red and me on the bed through the sliding glass door which I got up to open for him. He came inside that rainy night – never to be an outside dog again.
Spike sound asleep with his buddy Redon our sofa in Texas
(spring, 2012)
Red was quick to besurly – Spike not somuch
Spike seemed to understand that he was the low dog in the pack. Red was the alpha male because that’s how terriers roll. Smallest in size – but Red was the recognized “star.” Annie was a big dog like Spike but much older. She allowed Red to lead as long as she approved of his leadership, but don’t ever cross her. Spike learned to avoid her, but he loved Red. Red adored Annie. Typical love triangle similar to humans. Am I right?
The math Pretty and I had originally calculated worked well when we were in different homes but changed dramatically when we were together in South Carolina. Then we knew we had five dogs. Looking back to those years I’m not sure how we managed but we loved them all.
Spike, Redand black lab Chelsea in back yard on Canterbury Road
Spike fell in love with Chelsea on his first trip to South Carolina in 2012; it was a feeling that stayed with him as long as she lived – a feeling that remained with him forever after she died in March, 2016. To this day he whined or barked when he saw a big black dog walking by on our street from his perch on the couch in our living room on Cardinal Drive.
Spike at homeon our patioat Casa de Canterburyin July, 2012
Spike and Chelsea on my grandparents’ bedin September, 2014
my grandparents would be horrified if they knew
One by one Spike’s pack succumbed to illness and old age, and he became the sole survivor in the spring of 2016. Pretty and I promised each other we would shower him with affection, treats, walks, to give him the attention he hadn’t experienced as the interloper of the original four. We tried for months to lavish him with our love – perhaps partially to assuage our own grief. What happened surprised both of us. Spike’s grieving was as real as ours, and he didn’t like being an “only” dog. He missed his pack.
Enter Charly in the summer of 2016. Charly was twice rescued: once by Pawmetto Lifeline and then by Pretty, Spike and me.
Spike and Charly in ourliving room – 2019
when you can’t be withthe one you love,honey, love the one you’re with
Now we have another little old man about the same size as Red, but Carl and Spike aren’t buddies, though – neither is Carport Kitty who definitely dislikes our three dogs. That’s okay. Charly runs interference between Spike and Carl who has learned the importance of pretending CK doesn’t exist. Spike has a pack again. Pretty and I love them all.
Spike on his walk –January 11, 2022
By the way, cur dogs are really a wonderful breed of “hard-working treeing hounds” with traits that include being devoted to their people, protective of their environment and fabulous additions to families.
So to my cousin Martin I say thank goodness Spike ain’t nothing but a cur dog. Pretty and I wouldn’t have him be anything else.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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