SLEEP AND WITH IT, - PEACE

I rolled up the foamy-cushion mattress and stuffed it into the nearby closet. With it went the steel fold-up bed which I rolled across the room and into the storage area behind the doors. The sheets and quilt were taken into the laundry room to be washed. I swept the floor and rearranged the few items of furniture that remained in the room to my liking. I repositioned my writing table before the curtained window. I would then be able to write, and with the curtains drawn, every now and then, look up to see the side patio and the grass of the side yard outdoors. I positioned my wire-shelf stand to my left, keeping my immediate reference material nearby, Cape Cod maps and books, an occasional novel or two, and boxes of past writings dabbled of my own mind and hand, - prose, poetry, short-stories, novel start-ups (and stops), and every other scrap of scribbled or typed paper kept and collected over the many years. I stepped back a few paces and looked things over and decided I liked the new set up. "It would work!', I said aloud to myself. "Just maybe I would actually get 'serious' again about my writing projects still left 'undone'. Well, we'd see." I returned to the front porch and pulled from the cooler, left out on the cement floor of it, a cold beer. Then I returned to the writing table and the laptop in the small room before the sun-filled window. I sat down in the chair before it and snapped open the beer can. It was only then that I wondered if I would begin to cry again.

I had taken down the fold-away bed and re-done the room because I did not want to have a single thing to do with the bed for a very long time. My Yorkshire Terrier and best friend 'Jake' had died on the blankets of it just yesterday afternoon. I had held him in my hands kneeling to the surface of the mattress strewn with terri-cloth towels and felt the last warmth of his small body shudder and then release its grip on this living world. I had begged him to stay with me. He had struggled but he could not hold out any longer. The illness had taken him. The sick, dark, dirty, fucking illness that had come to him for two days had bested him. I had administered every known possible medication and electrolyte formula into him to save him. Jake had just had enough and could not ward off the ugly disease that must have found its savage way to his heart. There is no explaining the feeling. There is no way to describe the tears and the frustration. I was 'as' broken as a man 'can' be broken. And my little 'Jakie-Jakie' was gone. He had left me for sleep and peace and heaven. He was safe now and free but I was broken. As I write this, I am still broken. One may watch the horrible news everyday on the television and the Internet and compare my loss to the large human losses broadcasted constantly (it seems) but I say there is 'NO' loss and sadness felt like that of a trusted, loved and innocent being (as a pet) that loves you, and that is then, very suddenly taken away. I tore at my own heart and logic wondering if there was MORE that I could have done. I held him and cried. I closed his eye lids and kissed him and knew he was gone from me. He was my best pal 'Elijah's' first born son. He was our 'Eleanor's' first son. I felt as though I had let them down. Jake had struggled and fought and then found sleep and with it peace. I buried him beside a stone wall in the prettiest area of our flowered patio beside our beloved 'Yellow Cat' who died just a few months earlier. It was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do. I was numb and without true sensibility. Life is here beside you and then it is snatched away from you. I was without the power to stop the spark of the living from being snuffed out. I was helpless. When it comes to this subject we are all helpless. I write this for my little friend and brother 'JAKE'. He sleeps now and is with love, God and peace. Goodbye little 'Jakie-Jakie'. I will love you and miss you forever. -RSC. Elijah, Missouri