Dimes, Dogs and Cousins

5 Dimes

This is a short story, but it has many pieces that must come together quickly for any of it to make sense. It was not easy to write or read because affairs of the heart can be bittersweet to embrace. We were at the short end of a long goodbye, and the road before us grew steeper with every step.

This is a story about dimes, cousins, a father, a telephone man with a kind heart, his wife, an old yellow dog, and God's infinite mercy.

Let's start with the dimes. Oakley was my 14-year-old yellow Labrador. That is her in the picture above. When I composed these thoughts, she was in the last days of renal failure and was suffering from what is, for a large dog, extreme old age. We went for a walk, not a long one, at least in terms of distance, but it was just far enough. Along the way, I found a dime in the street along the curb, just a house down the way from our home. It was shiny and bright, so it caught my eye. I picked it up and stuck it in my pocket to throw in the old crystal ashtray I keep on my dresser for spare change. A few steps later I found a second dime, this one had even more shine but did not given evidence of having been run over by traffic. Even though it was way lying in, away from the curb, more out where it was easy to run over. I put the second dime in the pocket with the first one. Turning the corner at the end of the block, I found a third dime, this one in the middle of the street, but it was shiny new and had clearly not been there before the heavy rains that fell during the passing thunderstorm earlier that day. A fourth dime showed up a few steps further up the hill. I put it in my pocket with the others, and we continued slowly up the hill.

A few steps later, I realized in a flash that the dimes were not turning up by coincidence. I was meant to find them—they were there for me to see and, in being seen, to deliver a message. It was not the first time I had a mysterious encounter with dimes appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

Now that the old yellow dog and the dimes have been introduced, it is time to talk about cousins. My father and Pat Power Christianson were first cousins. They were very close growing up, even though her family ranched in Central Washington and our family ranched along the Big Hole River outside Twin Bridges. In the way the passage of years can loosen family ties, our families followed different paths in the years following my father's death when I was 11. We rarely saw Pat and her family. I don't recall having met her children before her daughter Carri, named after my grandmother, contacted my aunt, the widow of my father's brother, and asked to get together with us.

We met and quickly became very close, perhaps sensing in each other what our parents had shared together as cousins so many years ago. By the time we met, Pat had passed away after a long struggle with cancer. Before she died, she and Carri determined that if there was a way for Pat to communicate with Carri, she would leave dimes where Carri would find them. Carri told me she would occasionally find dimes in unexpected places at unexpected times, but the dimes would turn up when Carri needed to find one.

Shortly after we met for the first time, when she brought her triplets to meet the family, Carri and I were coming in through the side door of my house, and one of us spotted a dime stuck in the doormat. Over the next couple of days, we found several more. Laughing at the "coincidences," we agreed that her mother was happy that Carri and I were together and getting to know each other.

I have very little understanding of such phenomena. As a Catholic steeped in Catholic tradition and theology, there is no real explanation for how dimes would mysteriously show up as the dimes did for Carri and me, both when we were apart and when we were together. I believe in matters of faith some things happen for which there is no rational reason. That is, in fact, what faith is all about, belief in a God who can move through time and space to touch a human heart in astonishing ways, including the mysterious presence of dimes.

Since Carri and I met, I have had dimes show up occasionally, but all that really happened was picking up the dime, smiling at the pleasant memories of other times I found dimes, and stuffing the coins in my pocket. That is not what happened the night I walked around the block with the dog.

It is time to expand the story. Roy Halvorson and his wife Helen lived down the alley behind my grandparents, and the Halvorson and Trent families forged a friendship that kept our families bonded through the generations for more than 7 decades. Roy was a great hunter, as were my grandfather, father and uncles, and they often hunted together. Roy had a world-class Labrador retriever named Yippy, and from Yippy came several litters of award-winning puppies. Yippy and her progeny were one of the early lines of blue-blood Labrador Retriever royalty, and from Yippy came the first yellow Labrador to become a field trial grand champion.

In 1959, my father was in his early twenties and still finishing college because he had to drop out when I was born in 1955. He and my mother had virtually nothing while my dad scratched his way through college, and my mother worked as a secretary. Yippy's puppies sold for what would have been a small fortune in the 50s, but Roy found it in his heart to let my father "buy" a puppy from one of the same litters as Buck, the first yellow champion. She was a little thing named Gypsy, and she was the first yellow Labrador female in a long line of successive yellow females in my life from that day until this. For 56 years, my life has been wrapped up and bound together with one dog after the other. With Oakley, the fifth dog, the line came to an end.

Some years later, when Yippy had finally grown old and died, Roy's wife, Helen, comforted my broken heart by telling me in her particular and direct way the price we pay for unconditional love is to have to learn what it means to know loss. Whatever you think you have means minimal unless you mourn the loss of it when it is gone. Those words flooded back every time the chapter for one of my dogs ended. The words are still valid. You really appreciate the value of a good dog when you experience the grief that follows its passing.

Yellow Labradors mean more to me than just being pets. Over the years, 4 other Labradors came into my life and owned my heart. Each of them thought much more of me than I ever deserved. Each of them loved me more than I could ever love them. Each of them brought me comfort, happiness and consolation during inconsolable times. They challenged me to be consistent, giving, disciplined, and considerate. Each made me a better man, but none more so than this fifth and last one, Oakley. She taught me more than all of the rest and, as ancient as she was, is still teaching me even though she passed. I sensed at the time of this experience she would also be the last of the line. So far, that has proven to be true.

My life was changing in ways I could barely comprehend, and the changes happened in ways I would have never expected. Perhaps I had finally grown up, or at least grown. I realized that I no longer lived in my father's shadow, but I was still comfortable with being out in the whole light of life.

The sadness then came not from just the imminent loss of Oakley, which came to pass a few days later, but the passing of a way of life. It was my choice, a decision made in recognition of the changing stages of life I might be called to go where a dog could not accompany me. No one and nothing forced the decision to not get a new puppy on me, and if I changed my mind, nothing would prevent the change. Perhaps some new puppy will come my way, but it is unlikely.

We started with dimes, and now we return to dimes. Why was I finding them? The dimes were an unambiguous message of something, and I believe the message came from Pat. Since my father and I never had the chance to make a pact-like Carri and Pat, I believe he and Pat are together, and my father had Pat send me dimes to let me know everything will be all right. I could let go. He was waiting for this dog to join the other 4 dogs already with him.

So there. The story was told, well, almost told. There was also the matter of the fifth dime I saw lying across the deck from me beneath the BBQ grill as the story flowed from inside out. There is also the mercy of a loving God through whose grace family, friends and 5 good dogs have blessed my life.

Five dimes. Five dogs. I get it. I was a little closer to being able to say goodbye. I am still not quite there yet, but I am okay with that. Acceptance is the consolation of grief, and acceptance comes only through faith that this life is just a chapter and there is more to come. I don't know how sound this theology is, but why I die, I want to go wherever my Labradors went. Can you imagine eternity spent with such love?