Sammy Whoopka20 June 1996 - 29 June 2008
We had to put my Sammy Whoopka down on Sunday.
We went out to WNY for my grandfather's (Pakka, as we called him) funeral. That was enough to cope with in itself, and now it comes as a triple blow. Sammy seemed fine the whole time up at the farm --- we walked through all the fields Monday before last, something I’d never done before, and with 300+ acres of corn fields, alfalfa and cut hay drying on the ground it was no small jaunt --- and right when we got back home, I put his brown memory foam bed down for him, he plopped down on it, and after that it was a devil of a time for him to move his hind legs to go outside. I thought he was just fatigued by the trip or that his hips were sore from the car ride… it's happened before and he was back to himself in a couple of days. I called the vet on Friday afternoon and couldn't get in until Saturday morning... and at 3 a.m., he was whimpering, breathing hard, couldn't move and could barely open his eyes. I felt so helpless while he was in so much pain. Took him to the vet and the bad news came in small steps over the next day, culminating in X-rays showing a grapefruit-sized tumor near his bladder and the course they tried did nothing and he was still not responsive and needed pain medicines. And then on Sunday afternoon, I had to do right by him and be there just as I was when he came into this world. We said our last goodbyes, I cried my eyes out, opened his eyes so he could see me, pet his head, massaged his ears and told him he was a good boy and he could go see Mack and Sara and Pakka, and I stayed with him as the vet injected the barbiturates. Jerry carried him to the car and we buried him right close to Mack on the property.
The name Sammy Whoopka was a creation of my grandfather's that he named his dogs since he was in Holland. When asked what it meant, he simply said, "Whoopka is Whoopka." I’m not sure if that meant there's no translation for it from Dutch… or my thought, since I’ve always come up empty in searches, that it's an original word. And boy, did that original word describe an original dog! I remember the time up in Maine when he thought he was running into tall brush that was on level ground at the side of the road. He dropped off into the culvert, and bounded right back up in a flash, soaking wet, looking backward, with that look on his face as to say, "What the $%&@ was THAT!?!?" I tested it later, and that water was butt cold, even though it was summer. How he would leap into the water stretched entirely horizontal like Superman (pre-accident, as he couldn’t do that with his ‘special’ foot). Or how he would nudge the bathroom door open to peek that earned him the "Sammy the Pervert" nickname. How he'd sometimes “go out walkin' after midnight” when we let him out to do his final pee of the day. How he didn’t like people rough-housing, even for play, and would bark until the fighting stopped. That you didn’t need to call him twice (or even once) to eat something that had fallen on the floor, to go along with his expectation of cookies. Being the only dog I’ve ever seen that would allow himself to be vacuumed. Or the time when he caught a Canada goose in his mouth down in the boat launch and his eyes said, "Got it!.... What do I do now?!?" I've been trying to think on those kinds of memories... but then there are those brief flashes, like when people have been setting off fireworks (which, along with lightning, he got really worked up and panicky about) when my inner monologue is thinking "Oh no, Sammy's going to..." and then it's just a hot rush of tears. This house feels so empty now.
I'm not one to read into coincidences carrying great meaning, but my worldview has been changing. I think that the last Whoopka stayed here on earth just long enough to know that Pakka was properly taken care of, and then he called all of his Whoopkas to him. And then, how curious that Sammy had to leave us a year to the day --- nay, the hour --- that our Mack was relieved of his pain. I had been thinking of it relating to my Pakka and Beppa, but Sting’s song "Fields of Gold" has just as much relevance to Sammy and our walk last week: "You can tell the Sun in his jealous sky that we walked in fields of gold .../... We’ll walk in fields of gold." I'm so glad we made that last great memory.
There is a show running on PBS with Dr. Daniel G. Amen titled "Magnificent Mind at Any Age" where he mentioned that people suffering from grief can have "crushing chest pain." When I saw this last week, I was relieved that there wasn't anything abnormal with the pressure I'd felt for some time afterward but which seems to be gone now. The grieving process has moved at its own pace. Just after the holidays, I finally brought myself to wipe off his nose prints on the glass door. I've done small tokens, like putting his collar around the fireplace mantel picture of him and Mack (not explained above, b/c it was directed toward those who knew... Mack is Sammy's sire (father) from the first of three litters of German Shorthaired Pointers my family raised).
This week, I placed a headstone on his grave. After picking out a nice stone from my collection --- a rather large (about 70 pounds, as a fair guess) piece of black-flecked granite from Maine, we gave it to an engraver that we know and got it back several weeks ago. But the weather hadn't been very good until this week where the snows seem to have finally melted for good this year. Below is a picture of the stone in the back of the Jeep:
As for the quote, it is from the song passage quoted above --- the song I have most linked to Sammy (YouTube link to the Eva Cassidy definitive version). When I try to get a mental picture, I think most about the closing scenes of "Gladiator" with the main character waving his hands over the golden field and re-uniting, through death, with his wife and son. If I had a choice, that is the exact afterlife I would desire.
I walked it in by myself (don't worry about me, I'm quite used to carrying large stones) and laid it on Sammy's grave, tilted upon the large boulder under whose foot we buried him. To the poets, I guess this act is kind of metaphoric for carrying the burden of my loss and now being able to lay it down. I wish it were only that easy. People who say, "It's just a dog" just don't get it. I still carry the memories I shared above, and so many more that didn't make it for the sake of brevity. There's no setting them down and simply walking away.
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