Speaking of Heaven and how we almost went there early after Cheena died

Since my last post about heaven this week, I've been thinking about Badger again, missing his effusive greetings and attentiveness, even though he'd nearly knock me down in his happiness to see me and often wounded my food with his monstrous nails my foot as he danced on it. Since winter arrived, the house is usually dark and cold when I get home from work and the space downstairs where he lived seems particularly lonely. Missing him, I've reviewed an earlier post about his departure and my musings concerning pets and their souls (or lack thereof). As I've thought about Badger I've remembered the assemblage of pets from my childhood, one in particular whose departure from this life very nearly led to my own.

Cheena, a boxer/terrier, came to live with my family when I was four or five years old. Cearly my dad's dog, Cheena hounded his every step and as best he could obeyed Dad's every command. Living in the woods across from Traverse City Bay, we met all kinds of animals, garter snakes among them. Dad was good at spotting tangles of them and often called Cheena to "sic 'em," and Cheena would pounce, chomp and shake their brains out. Same with the mice. Dad loved Cheena almost as much as his kids, probably more because Cheena obeyed much better than we did.

I was six or so when Cheena was hit by a car as he trotted alongside the boy who each day delivered papers from his bike. Dad was out of town at the time, and Mom, informed by a neighbor who shared our our party line,* alone had to tell us kids what had happened. My foster sister and I wailed; my young brother and baby sister, too young to know what dead meant, cried too. Attempting to console us, my beleaguered mother loaded us all in the Studebaker for a picnic. Barely out of the driveway, we came upon our dog, still lying dead by the side of the road, and my mother, first to spot him, yelled, "Children! Don't look out the window!" Of course we all did and the wailing increased.

On the way to our picnic, Mom stopped at a Kroger grocery to pick up treats, leaving the four of us in the car as every sane parent during the 50's did for the sake of efficiency and sanity. While Mom was shopping, my techno-savvy brother, age two, slid from the back to the driver's seat and, in his play, pulled the stick shift from park into neutral. Because the emergency brake was not engaged, we began to move. With my little brother standing in the driver's seat, clutching the steering wheel, we coasted down the short bank bordering a four-lane highway, continued over the curb and into the four lane road below, finally coming to rest perpendicular to the traffic that was moving in both directions. From my backseat window I watched as a car came to a stop hear our car and then as a man leapt from the car, ripping off his shirt and waving it around to protect us (as I know now) from other drivers until my mom came dashing down the hill, keys in hand, to drive us away. 

At this point in my life, I'll take my own memory of the event over what must surely be my mom's. Relaying her own experience, Mom says that while she was in the grocery store she heard the click of the PA system and knew without a doubt that the coming announcement would be for her. Even before the voice began to alert "whomever" to "the Studebaker, now straddling Highway 31," she was running down the produce isle towards the exit door as an array of shoppers assured that the children in the middle of highway yet lived. How Mom channeled that announcement but didn't anticipate the near-disaster, especially given the proclivities of the two-year-old driving the car, remains a mystery.

At least for Mom, the death of our family dog was somewhat eclipsed by the near-death of us four children. Not that I realized I was having a near-death experience. I was merely a six year old observer sitting in the back seat of the Studebaker with no seatbelt.

At some point during that day a friend picked retrieved the body of our dog, put it in a cardboard box and drove it to our house for burial. Talking with her friend about the events of the day, Mom suddenly realized that the dog was probably visible as it lay in the back seat of their car and told me not to look; explained that it would be far better to remember Cheena when she was alive.  

I looked.