I have always liked September for all the things that Mother Nature begins and ends this month. Goodbye, hot muggy weather and blood sucking mosquitoes. See ya, hazy skies and sweaty walks. Hello, cool nights, cheery crickets, and pleasant strolls. Even when I was a kid and September meant school had just begun, I still welcomed September because it arrived with the promise of new television shows and falling leaves.
September's beginnings and endings were always pretty swell in my book, at least up til recently, it would seem. September marks the birth and death of the beloved boys we had before Baxter, and quite honestly, I am not sure how I feel about that.
Kep and Padua were just puppies when we brought them home long ago. Our life was full of new beginnings back then, having just graduated college, just moved, just started a new job, just married. As puppies, Kep and Padua helped my husband and I brave our new world, one pee spot at a time.
With the boys' life spanning over sixteen years, early memories of our boys now come back to me in random pieces. Meeting the boys as little shavers, Kep boldly running with the big dogs, while sweet Padua kept crawling back under the whelping box to continue his nap. The boys galumping out of their crate, both with gigantic balls of fuzz around their necks where their puppy collars should have been, the result of a hard day's work gnawing on each other. They were pals who kept each other company and learned about life just as Baxter does today, one day at a time.
Unlike Baxter, squirrels, not rabbits, were their mortal enemies. The mere mention of a squirrel would rile them up and we would let them dash out the back door in vigorous pursuit. Only rain would stop the boys from venturing out to combat their enemy. Padua learned this lesson the hard way, having dashed out and become thoroughly drenched before realizing that the day's squirrel sighting was a ruse. Kep, who had screeched to a halt upon seeing the rain, was there at the doorway to greet Padua as he skulked back inside in search of drier ground.
We loved and learned much from having these brothers in our lives. That doxies don't mind bobbing for carrots, blowing bubbles all the way til their target was secured from its watery depths. That ripe cherry tomatoes and jasmine flowers are tasty treats to be sought out even when blind. That these memories and more were the memories we cherished, all because they were born one day in September.
As Kep and Padua entered their care-intensive
geriatric years, we agreed we would not put down the boys solely as a matter of convenience for us. We thought our criteria firm for knowing when it was time to say goodbye. When they no longer ate. When perhaps one day we would awaken, but they did not.
Such was our mindset when I made the appointment for our mobile vet's house call. A routine follow up visit, I thought, so the doc could tell us that our old men were doing fine, despite Kep's recent tendency to curl onto himself, as though he wanted to nibble at a particular spot on his back, and Padua's intermittent interest in food, which we thought was the result of nausea from his antibiotics.
But same as the day I started my drive home from work and ended it spending three days in the hospital, some days have a way of unfolding in ways I might never imagine. After examining both old men, our vet mustered the courage to tell us what we were too blinded by affection to see. That day in September, sixteen years and a few days after Kep and Padua were born, we made the decision we wished we never had to make. I couldn't even be in the house when it happened.
Two years have passed, yet I am still haunted by that day in September. Haunted by the empty days thereafter where we found ourselves free of routine and unsure what to do with our new found freedom. Our boys were gone, and though they collectively weighed no more than twenty eight pounds, the hole they left in our lives felt more as though it was made by a meteor. Such are the empty days of September, when memories of their passing make the turning color of leaves all the more meaningful.
With September coming quickly to a close, I realize now that September is still the month of changes that I love. No story is complete without an ending. No life is lived without experiencing its ebbs and tides. I miss the boys, yet I am still thankful for the all memories that September brings. I will always remember the days of September.
