But when I did wake up I would still treat him to my usual greeting even if most of the time it caused pain in my legs and back.

  I really don’t know how long all this went on, but eventually I just stayed in bed most of the time. Either Senior or Mom would carry me out to do my business then carry me back in. It was sort of like that winter at Port Hardy except now it wasn’t a joke.

 I had noticed for a while that I had some sores on my body and although I licked at them they got bigger and they didn’t smell very nice. I was tired, I hurt all over and then one day I realized I was just tired of this kind of an existence.

  Mom must have understood; one day just after she brought me in she talked to me for a little while, she was kind of mumbling again but I did get that she was asking me if I would like to let go and just rest. I didn’t have the energy to try and respond, so I just looked her in the eyes and tried to let her know that, yes, I just wanted to sleep and not feel the pain.

  A little while later, she brought me some nice soft raw hamburger and fed me from her hands. You know that was as good as that first morsel of meat from Bernice’s bone. In a few minutes I felt pretty groggy and the pain seemed to lessen a lot. As I drifted off to sleep I was thinking that there is nothing like raw hamburger to fix a dog up.

CHAPTER 14

I

’m sorry if those last few paragraphs sounded a bit sad, but they were important so that I can get the rest of my story into perspective.

  I slept all the rest of that day, then later I could sense being lifted from my bed and carried out into the back yard. I was just too tired to open my eyes, but I knew it was Senior carrying me and I could sense a stranger with him.

  Senior laid me down and I thought that it was odd that my bed was there in the backyard. I think they were mumbling together. Suddenly and simultaneously there came a bang then total oblivion. But as quickly as that happened I found myself looking down on Senior and a younger man in some kind of a uniform. Suddenly I realized that I could feel no pain, and as I looked about I could see across our roof and all the way up the hill beyond the highway. I could here a dog barking somewhere towards the creek and a bunch of noisy crows out near the beach. Then it hit me I was just sort of drifting here in the air. I looked back down at Senior and his friend and saw that Senior was blubbering much like John had when he thought he was lost all those years ago. Then I glanced at the ground and saw a small black shape lying there. Somehow I knew it was me, but yet if that was me how could this be me up here?

  I think through out this story I have not hidden that I was quite smart, well the Uncle in me came through again! My body had just died, but I, Uncle Jerry, still lived! I lived free of pain, free of blindness and deafness. I instantly knew that the free spirit that I had always been had just attained a new freedom.  I was sorry for Senior’s sadness and also for Mon’s when I checked in on her. Somehow I felt the need to lessen their sorrow and to thank them for all that we had shared for all the years.

  I pushed with a new found will that they should remember all those years, to laugh and enjoy each day we had all shared. My efforts were not in vain and in a few days they started testing each other when one or the other would say, “Remember when?” or “Remember that time?”

  One day John came home again. He was not as easy as the other two as he couldn’t talk to them about how he felt. But after a few days he seemed to feel that I was still around and about. The first time I tried to push at his sub conscious, I knew I had gotten through because he actually jumped up and went to the door and opened it, he had thought he had heard me and without thinking had gone to let me in. Little did he know that I was already “in”; I was in the house, I was in the yard, I was in his head, but most importantly I was in his heart.

  I know now that we had spent eighteen years together, and I already knew then that we would spend eternity together.  As I watched him over subsequent years write little stories about me and repeat those stories to others, I could tell that he was starting to understand. I am again content, content that I know we now share that bit of knowledge; it just took him longer.