The Visit

Lucky Garvin
Lucky Garvin

It was the first day of December last year she came to visit. It was the sixteenth day of February she left… Cemone.

Perhaps you heard her story, treated by her former owner with a brutality that bordered on savagery, this gentle Doberman ended up at the Emergency Vet Clinic. There, a friend of ours, Sarah Edwards, called Sabrina to see if we would rescue her. We did.

We knew she was nearly bald with flea dermatitis, suffered with severe malnutritive weight loss, and had multiple injuries, old and recent, including an untended four inch laceration caused by her being struck on her mid-back with the edge of a shovel.

We also knew she had melanoma…

The cancerous growths were removed from her skin, after Cemone was healthy enough to deal with minor surgery. Not all the masses were cancerous, but some were. Sabrina and I were advised that, in canines, melanoma did not necessarily act as it does in humans. Ultra-sound showed no sign of spread or internal masses. We made the decision, nevertheless, to start her on melanoma vaccine. All went well; Cemone gained weight, played joyously, ate heartily, and slept deeply, now unafraid. She finally felt secure.

On February 15th, however, something was wrong with our baby. Sabrina noted it first of course. “Garv, her eyes are weak; something’s not right.” We checked her and found abdominal tenderness. Cemone would neither lie nor sit. Sabrina took her to the Emergency Vets. They weren’t sure; best to leave her overnight. Then the snows came, effectively stranding Sabrina and I in our home.

Long, painful story short: a massive bleed into her belly from two inner tumors that weren’t there a month ago. Sabrina and I made the decision to put our Cemone to sleep. We asked the vet, Dr. Heidi Brunk, to give Cemone a kiss good-bye for us. I thought I heard her voice catch when she answered, “I will.”

So it was that Cemone’s life with us ended where it began, at the clinic. We were told that everyone in the vet’s office came to say good-bye, and that there was not a dry cheek to be found. Dr. Brunk did as she had promised, and gave Cemone a love- kiss – and so did everyone else surrounding her.

Sabrina thought to call Sarah so she would know about Cemone. Sarah whispered her answer, “I’m holding her paw right now.” Is it but coincidence that the same spirit – Sarah – who had held Cemone’s paw at the beginning, held it at the end?

Such improbabilities bear Heaven’s inflection. I’m not that certain I believe in coincidences; I am, for the most part, convinced that ‘Coincidences’ come from another Source.

Cemone came to our home by a hard way, and we’ll never know how hard. It was left for my Sabrina and me to make the final entry in her diary.

Yet one question plagues me, as it always had in such circumstances: Why do such things happen? I’d just like to know, for, on its face, there is randomness, an insensitivity about it. Perhaps somewhere in the deep tangle of Heaven’s mind there lies an answer I might apprehend, but somehow I sense it’s not a reasoning for the Earth-bound to know.
Yet those cycles, those two conjunctions: ending where she began, with the same hand holding her paw, suggest The Creator, without revealing why Cemone’s existence played out as it did, would reassure us He is nigh.

So, for now, we’ll mourn. But we’ll do more than that: We’ll pray that one day Sabrina and I will see our Cemone waiting for us atop Rainbow Bridge.

– Lucky Garvin

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