Missing Owen

Missing Owen

There are two things I’ve said “never again” to more than once. Every time I’ve moved, packing up hundreds upon hundreds of books, I’ve said, “Never again,” vowing to die in whatever four walls currently surround me. And every time I’ve buried a dog, I’ve promised, tears streaming, to never love—to risk losing—another.

Owen came to live with me as a ten-week-old pup when I wasn’t certain I was done grieving another four-legged friend named Chester. Owen was a beautiful boy: well behaved, affectionate, a great companion, and an ever-ready traveler. He was a fixture on the back of the sofa. I didn’t mind.

I wrote two books with him curled up under my desk, and he appeared in a video, too, at the producer’s invitation. Off duty, Owen slept—and snored—on the foot of the bed each night, eventually migrating up to the pillow next to my head and settling there. His big brown eyes were the first thing I saw each morning.

For the last three months of his life, Owen suffered hurt after hurt, indignity after indignity. He retreated in pain, becoming less and less himself. Then we reached the point of no return. Resigned to the fact that I could no longer help him, I promised not to let him hurt anymore.

As we sat waiting for the end in the vet’s exam room, he crawled up in my lap and licked the tears off my face. It was the most engaged he’d been in weeks. Minutes later he stopped breathing with my face right next to his. “Good boy,” I whispered to him. “You’re such a good boy.”

I loved Owen every day he was mine, whether he was sick or well, playful or played out, scruffy or sleek, convenient or inconvenient. I loved him because he was mine. Maybe, just maybe, I loved him with the faintest resemblance to the determined, no-matter-what way that God loves me.

I pray that on Owen’s last day I loved him rightly and well, even doing what it broke my heart to do. Even so, I’m missing Owen, and I don’t think that will change anytime soon.

Never again? I’ll never say it again. And I mean it this time.

We love each other because he loved us first.

1 John 4:19