I remember the day of the Tennessee flood
The sound of the scream and the sight of the blood
My son, he saw as the animal died
In the jaws of the dog as the river ran by
I said, come back soon
He was fluffy and wriggly and cuddly and mellow, everything a puppy should be. 9-year-old Caely, one of the neighbor kids I babysit, was head over heels. She'd been looking forward to him for six months, ever since her dog (and best friend since birth) had been put down last fall, following aggression toward neighbors. She talked about the puppy probably once a week before he was born and much more frequently after that, eagerly anticipating his arrival.
Her dad carefully researched breeds that were gentle, kid-friendly, and easy to train. He put in a request with a breeder of Labradoodles whose dog had a litter on its way. They decided to name him Art, after an ancient king of Ireland. Caely went wild with nicknames for him. Art the Artist! Arts and Crafts! Artful Dodger! (That last one was my idea, actually... she's not an Oliver Twist fan yet.)
While he technically belonged to the whole family, he was really Caely's dog. She refused to let her younger siblings take the leash when we took Art on his first walk, and was quick to scoop him into her arms when he soon lost steam. She pleaded with me to let her do her homework in the same room as Art. She made me say hi and tell him how adorable he was whenever he came into view. (It wasn't hard to muster up enthusiasm.) At the park, he played Toto to her Dorothy.
She couldn't stop posing with Art. "Look how beautiful your smile is!" I told her after the shots below. "Yeah, I haven't really smiled like that since my mom died," she replied. (Her adoptive mom passed away in fall 2014.) My heart melted.
I kept warning her that he was going to grow into a Dog, that she'd need to work hard with her dad on training him, that he wouldn't always stay so cute and little and innocent.
But I was wrong.
It's there on the page of the book that I read
The boy grew up and the yearling was dead
He stood at the gate with the angel on guard
And wept at the death of his little-boy heart
I say, come back soon
Come back soon
I was listening to Andrew Peterson's song, "Come back soon," on my way home from my sister's last Wednesday night. I've always found it moving, but I didn't know how apt it was that night. As I was cruising down the highway, Art was wriggling his way under their gate toward the street, where he was run over seconds later and died before Caely's eyes. He'd been at their house a mere 11 days. Caely felt awful for not stopping his escape.
We wake in the night in the womb of the world
We beat our fists on the door
We cannot breathe in this sea that swirls
So we groan in this great darkness
For deliverance
Deliverance, O Lord
I know a lot of kids fleeing ISIS, or dropping out to sell street snacks, or fearing a teen marriage to an old man, might envy Caely's childhood. But she's been through a lot more loss in her nine years than I have in twenty-nine. Why is it that my dog, Demi, lived to the ripe old age of almost-seventeen, while Art made it less than three months? Why did the dog who was supposed to help restore Caely's joy end up ripping open her old wounds, reinforcing the fear that everyone she loves will leave her?
If nature’s red in tooth and in claw
Seems to me that she’s an outlaw
Because every death is a question mark
At the end of the book of a beating heart
And the answer is scrawled in the silent dark
In the dome of the sky of a billion stars
But we cannot read these angel tongues
And we cannot stare at the burning sun
And we cannot breathe with these broken lungs
So we kick in the womb and we beg to be born
Deliverance!
Oh, deliverance, O Lord!
Caely and I don't have any answers. But we were reminded this week of the power of empathy. A visiting family friend, Mr. Mike, had heard about Art. Knowing Caely wasn't ready to talk about it, he told her, "I put something in your room for you." It was a note that said, "I'm sad about Art too," and a china figurine that looked a lot like Art. I asked Caely if his gift made her sad by reminding her of Art. No, she replied, it actually made her kind of happy.
This Good Friday, I'm realizing that Jesus can empathize with the groans of all creation, the "pains of childbirth," waiting for God to set the world free and make all things new. He wept at the death of a dear friend, and His groans of anguish on the cross guaranteed that our current suffering isn't all there is. Life between the "already" of Christ's resurrection and the "not-yet" of His return can be painful, but it's never hopeless. Death wins battles but has lost the war.
Because Jesus fully entered our broken world, because He knew pain and sorrow and death, we can trust what He says about them. He says that He's with us through them, that His peace overcomes them, and that their days are numbered. He makes the sad things come untrue, and He's coming back soon.
