Goodbye Pork Chop

14^th February 2014

Dear Cassi,

      

Today I came home to find one of my dogs had expired. This was Pork Chop the elderly Labrador. He had been more lethargic than usual and crawled himself into a corner last night where he sat taking in what was left of the world. I could tell that he was dying and I knew that he would be dead when I came home, but it was no less painful to see him crumpled on the floor, his sad eyes looking out at the world sightlessly.

       

I knew I had to get him out of the house before Pickle came home and so I called the vet and asked about disposal of the body. It was expensive, but I didn’t feel like shopping around.

       

Porky being so large a dog, and his death leaving his back end open, I wrapped him in an old frayed table cloth and dragged is hundred and ten pound mass to the front yard where I place him in a concrete mixing troth and then in my car.

       

Even having been dead only a few hours the body smelled, and so I drove down to the vet with the windows open. A train had stopped on the tracks across Sunset Avenue, and so I had to take a detour.

       

It took some time to get things settled at the vet, and I was asked what had happened. I talked and I cried, I cried as I told the story of the old dog and his death. I cried as I drove home.

       

What does one do on the day his dog dies? Did I do the right thing? I found old Porky following a neighbor home and I took him in and looked after him. I gave him the best life I could for the short time I had him.

Remember the good moments, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Darkness of Dawn

22^nd November 2011

Dear Cassi,

   

   

The details of my mother’s death should now be clear to you, but the final note in this sad song is the topic for today. A good amount of my inheritance both in liquid assets and in overall value disappeared.

   

My home had always been a livable one. Not lavish by any standards but well kept. Within six month my father had ripped up the carpets and replaced them with the cheapest tiles he could find. The thin acrylic tiles were laid atop older wood, and so the wood rotted and expanded making the acrylic come up.

   

In six months my home went from middle class to a slum, and a slum it has been ever since. The old man felt no need to come home on a normal day, and so he came to see his children on the weekends just as he had when my mother lived. This gave my siblings free reign to do as they wished.

   

It is during this time that I learned to believe that abuse was normal as every day I came home to be beaten down. I lived in a family with no rules other than who can lie the best is right. It is from this darkness that my depression came.

   

Later when I complained of these things my grandmother could come up with no better defense for her son than that he could have stolen more.

   

From that time in my life was shrouded in darkness. I’d like to think that dawn has finally broken, and that I can see the sun. If that is true then it will be a slow sun rise.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal