Snow...

This is the only story I wrote on my vacation last weekend.



The biggest and best hill in town was at the VFW golf course.  Every Winter, families would gather there on snow-covered weekends and schools-closed snow-days to slide down that awesome hill.

I was fifteen, and just about getting too old for this kind of thing.  Pretty soon, this would be "kid stuff" to me, and I would find better, more grown-up ways to pass the time.  But for now, this was still my favorite thing to do in the snow. 

It was mid-January before we had our first real snowfall that year, and our first snow-day, as well.  My Dad made a thermos of hot chocolate, and drove my brother and I and all of our equipment out to the golf course.  I had gotten a real snowboard for Christmas that year, and couldn't wait to try it out.  It was just a cheap, plastic knock-off from Toys 'R' Us, but it sure beat trying to ride down the hill standing up on our sleds, the way my friends and I had been doing the past couple of Winters.

Over and over I flew down that gigantic hill at what felt like a hundred miles an hour.  Then came the slow climb back up the steep, slippery slope to the top, just to strap in and spend another few seconds sliding back down again.  It was like my own personal amusement park ride, with no waiting line.  Half-way through the day, some friends and I built a snow-ramp in the middle of the hill, so we could start flying off into the air during our rides.  As the light began to dim at the end of the afternoon, my father and my brother were exhausted and ready to go home, but I felt like I could've stayed there all day and all night; I couldn't ever remember having more fun.

After we got home, and had put our wet clothes in the dryer, and were enjoying some more hot chocolate in our comfy, warm pajamas, my father said he had to talk with my brother and I about something.  He sat us down and started to talk about my dog, Dillon.  Technically, he was the family dog, but everyone knew he was really my dog, just as his mother, Dree, had been my father's.  Dree had been a breeding dog; a pure-bred Black Labrador Retriever.  Over the years, we'd bred four litters of pups from her, and Dillon was from her first.  I'd been three years-old back then, and Dillon and I had bonded instantly.  My parents had decided not to sell him off with the other pups, and instead let me keep him.  So Dillon and I had grown up together.  Whenever the family came home, he'd greet me before acknowledging anyone else.  If anyone else in the family and I called his name at the same time, he would come to me.  I was the one who spent days and days of Summer roaming the woods behind our development with him, chasing squirrels and rabbits and hiding from the older boys from the other neighborhoods.  Dillon was my best friend.  For many years of my childhood, he was my only friend.  And I was his favorite Human.

But he was twelve years-old by this point.  The fur under his chin had gone grey years ago.  He was moving very slowly now, when he bothered to move at all.  He slept most of the day.  And a few days earlier, he'd stopped eating.  It was time, my father said, to "put him out of his misery."

I'd known this day was coming; I wasn't ignorant.  Still, I hadn't been prepared for it to be right now, this day.  I'd just been so happy, having so much fun on that massive hill!  And now, suddenly, it's time to kill my dog?!  But what was the alternative?  Make him spend another day suffering, just so that I could continue to avoid dealing with the inevitable?  Why not today?  Would tomorrow really be any better?

My little brother, many years younger than me, didn't understand it the same way.  All he knew was that he didn't want our dog to die.  He cried and cried, and my parents took him upstairs to try and console him, leaving me alone in our basement family room with Dillon.

He sat at my feet, the way he had so many times before over the years, and he looked into my eyes, and arched his eyebrows, as if to ask what was wrong.  I petted him, and rubbed his ears the way he loved so much; and I told him how much I loved him, and how very much I was going to miss him.  And I cried, as I tried to love him enough to make up for what I knew was coming.

And then, before I knew it, and before I was ready, I heard my father call down to us from the top of the stairs that it was time to go.  He began to call out, "Dillon!  Come!  Come here, boy!  Dillon, come!"  But Dillon didn't move.  Whenever my father would call his name, Dillon would turn his head to look towards the sound of my father's voice, and then turn back to me, with this quizzical expression on his face, as if asking me what to do.  Eventually, I heard my father say, "Son, he's not going to listen to me.  You'll have to be the one to tell him."

I started crying again.  It was bad enough to be losing my best friend like this.  I really didn't know if I could be the one to tell him to go.  It was too much to ask of a kid.  But my Dad was right - it had to be done, it was the kind and loving thing to do, and I was the only one who could do it.

As best I could manage through the tears, I squeaked out a pathetic-sounding, "Go on, boy.  Go on.  Go upstairs."  But either he didn't understand me, or he didn't want to go.  So I got up and started up the stairs myself, saying, "Come on, boy."  Dillon rose slowly, on shaky legs, and padded weakly over to the stairs at my command.  He hadn't climbed the stairs in many months, and it took him a long time that day.  I wonder if he knew, as I did, that it would be the last time?

Finally we made it all the way to the top to join the rest of my family in the living room.  My little brother, my mother, and I were all crying at this point; everyone but my father.  He was trying to be strong for us.  He opened the front door, and said, again, "Come on, boy!  Here, Dillon!  Come!," trying to get the dog to follow him out the door and into the waiting car.  But, again, Dillon wouldn't move.  He just sat and looked from me, to my father, and back again.  "What should I do?," he was asking me.

I didn't wait to be told this time.  I held my head up, and stuffed down the tears, and walked out the front door, saying, "Come on, boy."  He slowly followed me out the door; I could almost hear his poor, old bones creaking in the cold.  The Sun had gone down by this point, and it was dark as I led him down our front walk to my father's car.  When he was younger, Dillon used to leap into this car in a rush of infectious enthusiasm, excited almost to the point of mania by the prospect of going on a trip someplace else.  His favorite was the beach.  He'd swim in the ocean until he was completely exhausted.  But those days were gone now, and in the end, my father had to pick him up and place him in the car himself.

Standing there on the sidewalk, in my pajamas, on a cold, January night, I could see my dog through the back window of the car.  He watched me as I waved goodbye to my best friend, feeling like a fool, and a murderer.  He watched me as they drove away, and I stood shivering and crying in the cold.  He never took his eyes off of me.  I wonder if he knew it was the end, too.

After they rounded the corner out of my sight at the end of our street, I suddenly felt more alone than I'd ever felt before.  And I was so scared.  And I was so angry!  Angry at my parents, angry at time and age and sickness; but more than anything, angry at myself.  And suddenly I was running.  Running through the snow and into the woods.  Running deep into the trees where there were no tracks and no paths and no sky to be seen.  Running until my feet were burning in agony from the freezing snow.  When I couldn't go any further, I collapsed on my back, sinking deep into a snowbank.

I laid there, all at once burning and freezing in pain, shivering and weeping for my best friend, for the life I had loved and helped to end, and watching the steam from the melting snow float up off of my body into the bare branches of the trees above me, silhouetted against the stars.