Adios Bubba!

I felt a bit tired and also a bit stressed when i walk through the gate of my house. It was a chilly late evening. The house sounded a bit deserted. No particular noise around me. I should have known that something was amiss. It was too quite. I effortlessly moved my leg across the stairs and went into the house. My dad was working on his computer. My young brother Steve was doing some autodidact work on 3-D animation with his unfinished meal plate by his side. Nothing was particularly unusual but i still felt the growing silence in the house as still unsettling.

I went through the usual evening routine, I took my evening supper, and then gathered the meat and chicken bones that i couldn't eat to my plate then I spoke to my young brother:

"Don't forget to give your bones to Bubba".

That is all i needed to say to finally realize what was wrong with all this picture. Steve looked at me with quite a sadden face, and injected me the poisonous information:

"There is no more Bubba. Bubba is dead!"

I just felt the hurt for a split second, and i re-organized my emotion that was still vacillating and my brain which was still trying to process the information. "What?" i thought to myself. How can she die just like that. No matter how i turned it in my head, it was clear my dog was dead. Even though she was an old dog, part of her death was the fault of a Veterinary that was brought home to assess and cure her of a particular ailment she contracted sometime this year. Sniff, anyway - she is gone!

We have had quite a long history with Bubba. She came to our lives in the year 2000-2001. Steve wasn't even a teenager then, and now he is past his teenage-hood years. Of all of us, he is certainly the one who must be feeling the big emptiness of its death. As for me, my dog has always been my faithful and loyal companion. Even though she never prayed, she almost was by my side during my frequent solitary time of outdoor prayers.

She used to wag her tail observing me curiously as i prayed. Sometime, when the night was pitch black, just knowing and sensing her presence by my side gave me some form of comfort to stay out of the house for long hours, as i sat, on my veranda, thinking and gazing at the emptiness above me made of a starless sky and a moonless night.

It is just sad as i now realize that i have also lost a long time friend so to speak, a silent partner and an always loyal companion who never expressed verbal judgement.

I have to also admit that not everybody will share my feelings here. Especially the countless people who have been brutalized by her for trespassing on our private propriety. I can only shake my head in disbelief and smile as i remember all the amusing scenes of people running around with Bubba at their trails or the sometime bizarre stories such as a run away thief who was jumping through walls, going house to house. He got rescued by the police that were chasing after him when he landed in our private land. I was told that never before did a thief felt so happy to see the police arrive. The house got woke up by the odious screams that was emanating from the garden. I guess that is when the police knew on which gate they should go to exercise their protective skills.

Oh, so much funny, good and Happy memories with Bubba. I can't tell them all.

Anyway, this is the circle of life! Adios Bubba!