Buck Powe (2006-2018)
What a day for you to die, bud.
You often hear stories about snow falling the night after a battle. A peaceful white blanket covering the death. Things weren’t so poetic today.
My sister Josie woke me up early to see the snow and we jumped and shouted for joy, but our family has spent the better part of the day with our hearts in pieces.
Buck was my eighth birthday present, my first pet.
But he was really the family dog, even more so when I left for college.
We bought him from a guy in Selma of all places. I didn’t really pick him. I decided to get the dog that liked me best, and he followed me around. So, he picked us. Fiery red for a golden retriever. He liked to pull on our shirts and bite holes in them as a puppy. If I could pick two words to describe him, I would say kind and loyal. He would always love you and lick you even if you were in a bad mood. I cried into his fur countless times when it seemed like my world was tearing, ripping. And I cried into his fur today as his world was tearing, as I carried his limp body in my arms up the driveway. This earth fading and something glorious coming into focus. Yeah, I think the animals we love will meet us in heaven.
He was my rambling in the woods dog, my run alongside the horse dog. That poor dog was my horse before I had a real one, and I spent hours in the backyard teaching him to jump over things. One time I put on roller skates and had him pull me along the sidewalk. I often tied his leash to my scooter or bicycle. That was just trouble waiting to happen, and my mom said so a few times. But he always kept me safe. It shatters my heart that I wasn’t there to keep him safe, but God’s plans are best.
We were all playing out in the snow and “sledding” this morning. I was up at the house for a minute doing something.
I walk out trying to get my boots on. My sister and I see a commotion down near the road and people are yelling. It’s like an eighth of a mile down the driveway. So I pulled my boots on and ran.
Mom’s trying to pick Buck up. He’s collapsing into her arms, going into shock. There was some blood. A neighboring dog had had him by the belly for a good amount of time. Mom and Josie had kicked and screamed, but nothing had worked. Josie got bit, but she had a lot of clothes on. Our loving God knows I might have been killed or seriously hurt trying to protect him if I’d been there. That dog wasn’t playing around.
So I carried my big golden up the driveway, not even able to process the gravity of the situation. Meanwhile, the whole family is violently yelling and screaming around and behind me. Those dogs are still loose and trying to run back onto our property. We brought him in the house and laid him down, rubbed him, loved on him, did all we could. Begged him to hold on. But his breathing got heavy, and his eyes opened wider as I looked into them and rubbed his ears. We prayed, and I whispered in his ear to stay, to stay with us. But it was time for him to go. He started seizing. We put him in the back of the car to drive to the vet, I turned to pick up my phone, and heads were shaking. To see a death gasp is strange and sorrowing beyond imagination. I didn’t even realize what it was, but mom was saying he wasn’t there anymore.
I wandered over to the horses and sat in the snow, numb for some minutes, crying and remembering, unbelieving. He wasn’t even that badly hurt, but he was old, and I hadn’t seen the fight happen. I hadn’t imagined he was going to die even as mom had repeated it through tears and panic.
Even until we buried him, I kept expecting him to lift his head and slowly blink those deep brown eyes at me, to pant through that old drooping mouth, and lift his ears when I said goodbye.
I wished I had loved him better while he was here. He had been living on borrowed time for a year because of a brain stem condition kept at bay by steroids. I think that I tried to emotionally detach myself a long time ago. I feared the pain, and I knew what was coming.
I was wrong. Love in its nature is sacrificial. To truly love is to hurt.
Nothing poetic about Buck’s death. A battle bleeding red over white. Blood over beauty.
Then there’s the snow-white lamb, Jesus. He smeared red over his white, so he could give us snow over our bleeding sin, bleeding lives, our dying selves.
Hope isn’t lost. The snow today might have been stained, and our lives came away a little more scarred and torn by the loss, but the Lamb made red has conquered and risen. The other side of the curtain is not dim with shadows, but bright with the wondrous light of the Lamb.
“Death, be not proud. Death, thou shalt die.”
I’m overjoyed that Buck is no longer hurting, and I am thankful for the selfless gift his life has been to me and to our family.
Maybe he can go for a romp with Vale sometime through those endless fields in God's country.