Underdog

Yesterday evening I had something of a meltdown and by bedtime I was pretty tearful and upset. We have a shelf in our living room devoted to Sarah’s ashes and the purple urn we selected for them. The ashes aren’t actually in there, they are still in the box that they arrived in, because we are too scared to transfer them. But the purple urn, the cremains box, and a Yarhzeit candle the funeral home provided us (a Jewish tradition) all sit on this special shelf in the living room. Also on this shelf are Sarah’s little plushie of Walter the Farting Dog, keeping her cremains company, as does a small figurine of Stuart the Minion.

Sarah really loved the story of Walter the Farting Dog. It’s an excellent children’s book by William Kotzwinkle. Walter is adopted from the pound and discovered by his new family to be an inveterate farter who is unable to change his ways despite many interventions. He is at risk of being returned to the pound because of his intestinal issues when robbers invade the family home and Walter saves the day by, you guessed it, farting the most toxic fart ever. Sarah loved this story because first of all she loved any discussion of farts and farting, and also I think because it was an underdog story (literally) in which Walter’s deficits bonded him to his family forever and made him special. And it was very funny, and we all loved reading it together. There were several Walter sequels in which Walter similarly saved the day by farting, but none quite packed the punch of the original.

So yesterday I was dusting and arranging our little shelf shrine to Sarah and I saw her Walter Stuffie hanging out with her, and I had a strong wish to read the Walter story again. I went into Sarah’s room and tried to find it. I couldn’t. By late in the evening (by which I mean 7:30) I was going through all her books. I found an old pre-school ‘yearbook’ which I really enjoyed looking at again for a while, and a handmade card that her 4th grade bus buddy, Jennifer, had made for her, but I couldn’t find our copy of Walter the Farting Dog.

Walter’s absence really made me feel very tearful and sad, as if I could not locate Sarah all over again. I was crying by the time I went to bed, feeling like I let Sarah down, and feeling bereft, and wishing I could just find the book and read it again to myself and recapture the good times we had. I also had this strange theory in my mind that Sarah had somehow managed to have taken the book with her as afterlife reading.

Sarah’s preschool yearbook that I found (a little computer printout her teachers put together), had some pictures of her in the preschool pool with her physical therapists. Something about the posture she was in brought back a memory for me of swimming with her at that age in the summertime and holding her and urging her to kick her feet. “If your name is Sarah, kick your feet” I would say. “If your Daddy’s name is Max, kick your feet.” She really enjoyed this game and it got her to exercise her legs. It was a delicious memory of a time when she was still developing and before she began to lose her physical skills.

So I guess I was just a sad sack last night at bedtime, feeling bereft of Sarah, bereft of Walter, and bereft of summertime joys. Max comforted me as best he could and of course we vowed that if we didn’t find our copy of Walter we would just order another one. Sometimes I just wish I could order another go-round of my life again. A do-over. But Amazon does not offer that.