Dear Bernie,

It’s been over a month since Mom called on a Sunday and her voice broke when she spoke and I could tell she had been crying and I first thought Grandmama had died.  As my ear pressed on the phone my stomach rotated, shrank, dropped, became aware of itself, and registered feelings in my head.  Finally, Mom said you had passed away earlier that afternoon.  All I could do was lean my head against a doorframe.  Tears did what tears usually do and leaked out over my face.  I was left to deal with the mess.  I can’t remember exactly what Mom talked about for the rest of the phone conversation.  I think we both said, “Bernie was such a good dog,” over and over.  We touched on all the normal points of conversation one has in these situations.  She told me how you had been laboring for most of the weekend and how in your last moments both her and Dad held you and pet your head.  She said, “Then Bernie simply stopped breathing,” and you were gone.

In the month since you’ve passed I’ve failed to write a letter to you.  I began writing to you shortly after Dad called at the beginning of the year and said you had suffered a stroke.  They were fun exercises, but since you’ve passed I’ve struggled writing that final farewell.  Every time I sit down to try I end up breaking down, closing the word document, and going to do something else. 

I remember going to work in the days after Mom called that Sunday.  Anytime I thought of you I had to duck behind my desk and hide my tears.  Luckily, my desk is in the corner, tucked away from everyone else.  Some days I would open a word document at work, type ‘dear Bernie’ into the blank space, start to cry, close the word document, and have to go to the bathroom to blow my nose.  Tears seemed to want to leak out of every hole in my face.

As the days passed things got better.  I stopped crying at work.  I went on with life.  Sometimes I would open a word document and think of the spot where my Dad said he buried you in the front yard and I’d have to close the word document.  Weeks started to disappear.  My mom would call and say she was feeling better.  She’d tell me how her coworkers would sometimes try and console her by saying, “You’ll find another dumb dog to love before you know it.”  I think my mother wanted to punch these people in the face.  Maybe the gut.  I don’t know.  She never said, “These comments make me want to bury my fist into human flesh.”  Instead, she would say, “Owning a dog is a lot of commitment.  I don’t think many dogs are worth that commitment.  Bernie was.  We miss him.  I wish he never left.  Now your father and I go on bike rides after work.  Sometimes we don’t come home right after work.  The freedom is nice.  I still miss Bernie.”

On the Monday after you passed I rode the bus to work and cried.  I read an email on my phone from Mom about how it felt weird with you not around the house anymore.  I was afraid to look at the other bus passengers.  I wanted to reassure them I wasn’t crazy and that I wasn’t about to blow up the bus.  Instead, I held my bag tighter and didn’t reassure anyone.  I remember wishing I had a paper bag to put over my head.  I cried Tuesday.  Wednesday was a little better.  Thursday felt okay.  I tried writing to you on that Friday when I got to work.  Instead, I spent most of my time in the bathroom blowing my nose.

Nothing I’ve written since you passed feels right.  In previous letters before you passed I would just ramble.  There didn’t need to be a point.  It didn’t really matter if the letters were good or not.  With you gone, I’ve felt a need to write the perfect sendoff.  In my mind I need this letter to shoulder the weight of your passing.  I need it to be the one piece of evidence proving beyond any doubt that you were better than any other dog that ever lived.  Of course, this letter isn’t any of those things.  In many ways the letter shouldn’t matter.  And when you think about it, the letter doesn’t matter because technically it’s addressed to an illiterate deceased life form who never had the opportunity to learn to read because most people figured this life form didn’t possess the capacity in their tiny head to comprehend the idea of words.  This is not meant to be a knock against you Bernie.  You were what you were.  I would argue you were better than anything any person could ever consciously create if given the opportunity to construct the perfect companion which is funny because I doubt most people, if asked, would want their best friend to be illiterate.

Who knows?  Maybe it wasn’t your fault you couldn’t read.  I remember one time when Grampy and I were playing catch in the back yard.  He tried to throw a knuckleball and it slipped out his hand and hit you in the head.  Maybe you had the capacity to read before Grampy knocked it out of you.  As much as I wanted to punch my grandfather in the face when it happened I doubt your life was altered significantly by this moment.  At best it probably taught you not to run around being a lunatic when people are throwing hardballs back and forth, but judging from later sessions of catch with my father, the knuckleball upside the head taught you very little.

Still, this isn’t supposed to be about you being an idiot.  It’s supposed to be about your passing and how much you’ll be missed, but considering that you were a simpleton I can’t help but share another moment from your glorious history.  It was early summer/late spring and I was outside with you lying on the front lawn at home.  All of a sudden you started barking at the grass and trying to bite it.  I didn’t understand at first, but when I got closer I saw there was a fly on the grass and for whatever reason it couldn’t fly.  You were going crazy over this fly, but it wasn’t a vicious lunacy.  It was a half excited insanity that you seemed to be embarrassed by, almost like you were asking yourself, “What am I doing?” as you barked at the fly.  You barked like this for two or three moments, ever so often, looking up at me with eyes that said, “Why am I barking?  Please help me stop.”

Your passing has hit my parents real hard.  A big part of their life is empty now.  I don’t mean to put you at blame in anyway.  It’s more a tribute to you.  Since leaving for college and then moving out and living on my own you became their child.  I’m sure in some ways this annoyed you, but it wasn’t like they dressed you up in my old clothes and signed you up for Little League.  Though, I kind of wish they had even if your baseball skills are equivalent to Tony Pena Jr.  Good glove with no offensive skills.  I bet if you could be trained to sit in the batter’s box and not chase the ball when it was thrown back to the pitcher you would have posted a decent On Base Percentage against the erratic arms littering Little League programs nowadays.  Anyway, the point is I never felt guilty leaving.  You were the sibling who would always live with mom and dad.  The positive was you were functional for the most part and though you never had a job you didn’t come across like one of those lowlifes that drains off their parents for years just because they’re too lazy to get a job. 

You were their life in many ways after I left.  It allowed them, I think, not to notice I was gone.  I feel bad now with you gone.  The house is much emptier.  When food is dropped on the floor they actually have to bend over and pick it up instead of waiting for you to clean it up. 

I don’t really know what else to say.  I wish there was some way to put all my thoughts in order.  I wish there was something I could say that put everything in perspective and made me feel better, but to be honest I think I will always be a little sad when I think of your last moments, with Mom and Dad petting you, and knowing I wasn’t there.

You were a great dog and as corny as it sounds you were my best friend.

Love,

Mark