Dear Clifford
A letter to my childhood dog
Dear Clifford,
I want to start this letter by telling you that you have been, and still are, my very favorite thing. I remember so vividly the day you pitter-pattered into my life. I always wanted a dog, but with allergic family members I resigned myself to the kind of drab life that, well, didn’t have you. When you came in the door, both of our tails wagged. I couldn’t believe how cute your stupid face was, and the way your entire body wriggled when you were happy — which was most of the time. My heart swelled when you buried your nose into me, and then pressed harder, because close couldn’t possibly be close enough. I felt it too, bud. You loved me completely, and you let me love you.
When I met you, I was just a starter-kit teenager. The last few years had included the divorce of my parents, a new town, and new family members, and I was all too well acquainted with what the dirty-wet liquid that covers school-bus floors — the other kids called it “bus juice” — felt like on my face. I tossed a blanket over those feelings and packed them down—my family had enough to deal with already, I figured — but we all remember those white-hot eruptions that came from me with too little notice. Therapy helped clear the smoke, but the coals still burned. Until you slobbered all over them. You pushed the door open with your nose when I shut everyone else out. You knew when I needed to play and when I just needed you there. I came with no instructions, and you never asked for them. You were my constant — the only one I’ve had these past 17 years — and you were my friend during the times I had others and the times I didn’t.
Sometimes it feels like my life only began when you came trotting in. You were the first thing I saw when I came inside, rosy-cheeked and grinning, after my first kiss in the driveway. I told you all about it while we wriggled in the comforter together to get warm. Your fur soaked up the many nights of tears from my first breakup — and the second and the third. Mom told me you scratched at my door for two weeks after I left for college — it broke me. We learned how to cope without each other because we had to. We pretended we weren’t so far apart, bolting to each other in a wriggling tornado every time we reunited. But I saw your white whiskers. You smelled the work trips. We knew, but we didn’t let it get in the way of our bond. We didn’t let anything.
My love for you is no secret; nearly every gift I receive is dachshund-themed. I would say you’re in my heart, and that’s true, but you did more than paw your way inside. You shaped it. You’re listed on its label, because to get the mixture it is now it needed a heavy dose of you. I’ll go on living without you, but the job I loved the most will be gone. Mom always told me there was a special bond between a dog and his boy. Being your boy has been the world’s very best job, one I took seriously and with pride and dedication. But I knew someday I’d be a boy — just a boy. And boy, do I feel like one today.
You have been my life’s buffer from the world — my unconditional and unrelenting escape — and I’m not sure what it means to live in a world without you. But I know you gave me everything, every day. We owed it to you to help you now, and of course you made your own end peaceful and loving. You would. When I found you sleeping in my shoes a few months ago, I laughed and thought you were just confused. When you pulled them into the living room so you could sleep on them next to me, I cried. You were deaf, and blind, and your movements had slowed, but what you said meant the same in every language. And I love you, too.
There are so many pups on earth to love, and I will and do, but they will all look a little like you, to me. Thank you for loving me and, maybe more importantly, for showing me what it means to love at all. Rest up my sweet boy. You’ve earned it.
