On Death, Dying and Impotent Men of Steel

How do you explain to a three-and-a-half-year-old that his first dog isn’t coming home again?

The Boy was only 2.5 when Woody died almost a year ago, but he continues to keep bringing him up. Just this morning he announced he was sad. “About what?” I asked him.

“About Woody,” he replied.

And then we went round and round again, the same well-traveled territory. Woody was broken but he’s fixed now. Well, if he’s fixed, why can’t he come home? Because we have Obi now. Yes, but Obi’s a bad dog, my son reminds me. That he is, I agree (just this weekend he lunged at a visiting friend and her newborn). So I pull a line out of “Old Shep” and tell him that Woody has gone where the good doggies go, and anyhow, he likes playing with Obi, right? He doesn’t fall for my misdirection. Superman will bring him back, he assures me repeatedly. And round and round we go, the knife twisting deeper into my heart with every ugly truth I obfuscate.

I just finally threw out all Woody’s toys in the last month (during my blissful period of partial unemployment). When we first brought Obi home I was open to the idea of passing Woody’s stuff along to him, but we learned very quickly that Obi doesn’t play with stuff, he eats it. And I wasn’t up to watching my beloved former dog’s prized possessions destroyed one after another by this damned interloper, so I put everything away in the garage.

So one week last month I threw away Woody’s toy basket and its contents (after retrieving one to remember him by); the next week, I threw away his bed; but the last step was brutal. The blanket he slept on for years was still covered with his fur, and I discovered if I pressed it up against my face and inhaled, it brought him all rushing back to me. Somehow, I managed to get it out on the curb for the trash guys but a big part of me went with it.

On the one hand, I am extremely grateful my son still remembers his first dog. He really was quite an excellent dog in his youth, and in his dotage, was an integral member of the child-rearing team when we first brought The Boy home from the birthing place. I’m glad Woody still has a place in my son’s heart and I don’t want to close the book on this conversation about him. I just wish I knew how to conduct the conversation in such a way that it didn’t a) require deliberately misleading him and b) reliably destroy me for the rest of the day.

On my birthday later this month, it’ll be eleven months to the day that Woody went to where the good doggies go. I had a lot of work stuff to do this morning, self-promotional stuff for projects relating to the inevitable, impending demise of my newspaper career and what will come after, stuff that won’t get done because I can’t self-promote this morning.

All I can do is miss Woody anew and try to crack the puzzle of how I keep him alive in my son’s memory but make it clear that even Superman, with all his awesome powers, can’t go to where the good doggies go and bring Woody safely home again.