sad

One of these days I'm going to write a book about all the pets we've had in the Plattner family. It totals somewhere at 15 cats and 11 dogs, all of them having contributed to lifetime moments of laughter, tears, frustration, and, above all else, unconditional love. But a book like that will take time and reflection in order to do them all justice. So, for this post, I just want to emote.

Last night, the second in a pair of my hometown Schnauzers, Pepper (bottom), The Wee Pep, passed away. Last summer, her brother, Jack (top), or Hungry Jack (yes, like the pancake mix, because, not a moment after he was born, the first thing he did was eat) fell into my pool, most likely as a result of a seizure, and drowned. I know that's very morbid and tragic and sad, but I'd like not to focus on their deaths (to start at least). I was, of course, devastated after Jack's accident, and I'm pretty bummed out now after losing Pepper. But, she was an old girl -- her 13th birthday was on the 22nd -- and she fell victim to pancreatitis and kidney failure, which Schnauzers are apparently the poster child for. But, beyond the sadness, I'm just kind of reflective.

Before Jack and Pepper, we had another Schnauzer, Benny, who I loved just as much as any dog I've ever had. He was the fifth brother to four others: me, my triplet brothers and older brother. The day the triplets were brought home from the hospital Benny began a vigil, posting up underneath our cribs every night, ears perking every time one of us cooed or rolled or cried. As we went from crib to highchair to blanket on the floor, Benny was always there, ya know, just checking things out, making sure it was all OK like an older brother does. 12 years later in 1997, old age just caught up with Benny out of nowhere, as it seems prone to do with Schnauzers, who stay sprightly and competent to the end. He died on a vet’s table with his head in my mother’s hand, and he was buried under the big oak tree in Mulberry, AR with the rest of the Plattner pets wrapped in his favorite sheepskin rug.

We grieved for Benny for a while, not sure when anyone would be ready to get another dog. But, time passed and it came to that point where we were ready, and so rather than one dog, mom thought two would be better so they'd grow up companions. We kidded ourselves for a while thinking we get another breed, but I think we all knew in the end we'd just get Schnauzers, because we're Schanuzer people. They are, at any given time, protective, incredibly affectionate, temperamental, almost apathetically relaxed, and, like Hungry Jack especially, ornery. With all of that, they just fit in with my family.

So they were born, Jack and Pepper, the biggest and smallest of their litter, and thus we had two new kids in the house. And they were like new babies, younger siblings to myself, because they were sort of terrors. We loved them, but they tore up everything. Relentlessly teethed on everything from kitchen chairs, table feet, plunger handles and even the walls themselves, which they'd managed to dig a 3 inch hole in. But, despite all of that, I don't remember the anger or irritation. And maybe it was just because of who I was then. We got Jack and Pepper when I was 12 years old, on the brink of adolescence, which, it goes without saying, is inherently tumultuous. Compound that with being gay and frustrated and confused, and, well, yeah...not ideal.

So these dogs grew and matured as I did, changed when I did, lived and experienced as I did. We're talking about different levels here, obviously, but as I sit here now, contemplating their passing, they'll be forever linked to that period in my life when every day was about learning something new about yourself or the world or people or your friends or your family. And sometimes that was hard and really fucking shitty. And you hated yourself and you hated your friends and you hated your family because no one understood you, or you didn't understand them, and all you wanted to was to be settled. Settled like your dogs, who just played outside and ate their food and drank their water and wagged their tails when you walked in the door. And you could just sit down with them, they'd get in your lap, lick your face, and you would get a good solid ten minutes of love. No questions asked. And sometimes it was exactly what you needed in that moment. Just love.

But sometimes, most times, things were great. I had friends. Good friends. Great friends. And we'd always hang out at my house. Play video games. Make stupid movies that we still laugh at today. Form a band and record the dumbest songs you've ever heard. Watch movies and eat tons of food. My older brother would have parties and I'd get to be there, kicking it with all these college people, thinking I was so cool, even though I know I wasn't. But I'd just sit there on the kitchen floor with Nancy, my older brother's then girlfriend and now wife, with Jack or Pepper in my lap and me lapping up the experience, just like the dogs were.

Then all of a sudden we were all seniors, about to go to college, to part ways physically but not emotionally. And I was saying bye to my family and my friends and, of course, the dogs, my mom always joking she was going to send Pepper to New York with me so I'd have a friend from the start. And then nothing was the same, there were no constants. Without those constants the variables changed and thus so did the equation of my life, as least when I was in New York. That was until I would come home and there they'd be -- my friends, my family, Jack and Pepper. The constants were back, if only briefly, and all it took was Jack wrapping his front legs around my neck to give me a hug, or Pepper curling up in my lap begging me to rub her tummy and I was back, relieved, momentarily engulfed in the bubble of home that hadn't, thankfully, changed.

Now, at 26, I'm getting older, farther away from all of that, which is lamentable, but it's also life. Those constants that you rely on vanish, mostly for good, and you can do nothing but adapt. So the next time I go home, Jack will be gone, Pepper will be gone, and I'll have to struggle with the fact that the world that made me keeps losing its pieces and I'm not there to watch them go, to grieve the process, and then reconcile. I'm only left with memories. Really good memories. But that's a consequence of my choices, and, so, perhaps then I have my own process I have to begin to reconcile, that of watching my past fossilize while I begin to build a separate and very different future. Arkansas will always be home, or at least one home. And I'll never, absolutely never, absolve myself from the life and the people I have there. I guess it's just that...shit changes. People change. Dogs die and so does the past when that which made up that past is gone in the present. Or -- foregoing again morbidity -- let's just say the past changes. And, frankly, I hate change.

RIP my sweet little Pepper. At least your back with your Jack.

Seth