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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, we are now 23 days until the start of college football in Oklahoma, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a story about a saint bernard.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
When I was 9 my parents divorced. A few months later we moved to a small town of about 800 or so people. About a year after that we moved to a house on 5 acres about 2 miles outside of town. Our house was just off of historic Route 66 on the top of a hill. In the winter time we’d occasionally get enough snow to go sledding. There were plenty of kids nearby and we would sled down the snow covered dirt road behind our house.
After a couple of years, some of the other kids moved away and new folks moved in. A husband and wife named Mark and Donna moved into one of the houses. The house was nestled at an angle from the dirt road in front of it. The back of the house came right up to a thick grove but the rest of the property was wide open. The property was guarded by a white wooden rail fence with two open spaces to accommodate the circle drive. It had a large front yard with two aged elm trees in the middle of the drive. On the east side of the house was small barn that had been used as a horse pen by the previous owners and the horse pen opened up to a large field that the horses had called home.
Mark and Donna didn’t have horses, but they did have some large animals. They had two saint bernards, BeBe and CeCe.
Mark and Donna were a young couple, probably in their early 30’s. They had no kids. They were younger than my parents, and obviously older than me and my brothers. Mark was an active and athletic guy and they had a basketball goal. We had one too, but we spent a lot of time shooting hoops with Mark at his house.
Mark had a cool style about him. He was very encouraging and seemed to always be on the lookout to impart some wisdom. For example, one day while we were playing basketball, my brother lost control of the ball and it damaged his garage door. Mark said it was okay. Afterall, it was an accident, and just part of playing the game. A few weeks later my brother was horsing around and damaged Mark’s gutter. Mark got mad. He pointed out that damaging his stuff was fine when it wasn’t intentional or negligent, but damaging things out of foolishness was not acceptable. It was a good lesson for all of us to learn.
Another time we had gone into town with Mark. He drove a red and white Chevy S-10. On the way home, we encouraged Mark to see how fast he could get his truck to go. At first he resisted, but our persistence paid off. He floored the accelerator and got the truck moving well beyond the speed limit. Sure enough, there was a police officer nearby and Mark got a ticket. We apologized and felt bad. But Mark didn’t blame us. He said that it was his decision to speed, not ours. He was the adult and he should have made a better decision. He said he would keep the ticket tucked in his sun visor as a reminder to make better decisions. Every time I looked inside or rode in Mark’s truck after that day, the ticket was still there.
Mark’s dogs and basketball goal were cool, but my favorite thing to do at Mark and Donna’s house was play on their computer. This was in the late 80’s, maybe 1990. Computers were expensive and they were not a staple in every home by a long shot. I could spend hours sitting at their computer playing games or using the drawing program. One time I made a map of the town and Mark thought it was really cool. He encouraged me to take it home and show my parents so they could see the cool thing I made.
When I was 14 we moved again to a house in town and that was pretty much the end of my relationship with Mark and Donna.
When I graduated high school and moved into the city to attend college, I got a part time job at the bookstore. It just so happened that Donna also worked there. It was really cool to see her again. We worked different times of day, so we didn’t see each other a whole lot.
I’m not sure why, but one day a friend mine and I decided to visit my hometown. While we were there, I had an urge to drive by my old house, and then turn down the hill to Mark and Donna’s house. Much to my surprise, Donna was not only home, but she was out in the front yard and she wasn’t alone. She was resting on her backside and knees in between the two elms. One of the saint bernards was with her, and another woman joined them.
I don’t know why, but we decided to stop and see what was going on. It turned out that we had stopped by on a terribly sad and difficult moment. I don’t remember which dog it was, but we were there for its final moments of life. A couple of weeks earlier the other saint bernard had died. Since that time, the remaining dog had refused to eat and had gotten sick to the point where the vet had determined the only course of action was to put the remaining dog down. The other woman was the vet and she was on sight to administer the life ending injection.
It was a somber moment. When Donna was ready the vet administered the drug and seconds later, the dog was gone. Donna sat on the dirt of their front yard, a spot that had been unable to produce grass because of BeBe and CeCe’s constant activity, and held her dog’s head in her lap as the dog breathed out for the final time. I had never seen anything die before. It was surreal.
Here’s what I learned.
As surreal as that moment was, I left there confident that I was in the exact spot that I was supposed to be. Even though Donna and I weren’t all that close, and she’d never met my friend before, we still gave her comfort. We showed up out of the blue on the day and at the moment when she was preparing to say goodbye to her friend…alone. Yes, the vet was there and able to provide sympathy, but the vet was also the one ending the life of the dog. We were able to sit on the side of Donna and help her.
I really can’t explain why we stopped by that day. It was as random as random gets. I just know that I had a notion to go by, and I followed that notion.
And that’s the lesson for today. We’ve all experienced those moments where the thought of a friend or loved one pops into our head. Maybe it’s that moment when you pass a motorist on the side of the road or a homeless person asking for help.
In those moments we get that voice that tells us to act. Do it. Don’t ignore the voice. Make a call, lend a hand, stop by for a visit, and share what you can. Sometimes that means money, sometimes that means time, sometimes it just means being there. And sometimes, being there is the entire world.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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