Yola’s Last Walk

Barb walked across the street with her violin.

Her daughter, Isobel, asked, “What will you play?”

“Don’t know yet. Something sad, or happy. Or both.”
  
Caroline opened her door before they knocked.
 
“Thanks for coming. It means a lot for Alice,” she said. “But Kate is taking it just as bad.”
  
Alice is her daughter, seven years old. Kate is her neighbour and Alice’s best friend, also seven. They were standing inside the house near a cardboard box.
  
“Anyone want a glass of wine?” Caroline asked.
  
A few did, and then it was time. Perry, who is Alice’s father, picked up the box. Barb played something that was sad, and happy.
  
And a procession of about a dozen neighbours and friends took Yola for a walk. No leash was needed.
  
Kate was crying. Alice was crying. The violin was singing. Everyone following the box walked around their house to the back yard.
 
Their full names and location must remain a secret because they were breaking the law. Those who make laws like this have small heads and smaller hearts.

 Earlier in the day neighbour Jim had dug a hole three feet deep in the back yard. He is newly retired and had time to do that, but he would have done it even if he had to go to work late. Perry, with the box in his arms, had rushed home from work early.
 
He put the box down next to the hole behind their house.
 
“Can you tell us a story about Yola?” Caroline asked her daughter who was still crying.
 
“Yes,” sob, “I remember,” sob, “When she ate Beth’s pizza.” Then she laughed. Everyone laughed. Beth is Kate’s mom and lives next door.
 
“And remember when she tooted in your room and we thought it was one of your fish that jumped out of the tank and died,” said her father, Perry.
 
And everyone laughed again.
 
“And there was the time Yola pooped out the blanket,” said Caroline.
 
More laughter. That was the locally famous story a few years ago when Yola was dying because she had not pooped for a week and the morning she was going for an expensive operation she pooped out a piece of blanket.
 
“Yola pooped, Yola pooped,” Caroline shouted around the neighbourhood as she held up a plastic baggie that had poop and pieces of a blanket in it. Everyone cheered. Now everyone remembered, and laughed.
  
“I don’t really like dogs,” said Bruce, who is Kate’s father. “I never have. But I liked Yola.”
  
Isobel, who often walked Yola, took her mother’s violin. She is what is called a teenie bopper. That is often a difficult age. She had not played the violin for several years, but in that back yard she filled the darkness with beautiful music.
 
“It is time,” said Caroline.

Perry lowered the cardboard box into the hole. 
 
“Wait,” said Alice. “Yola needs a blanket to keep her warm.”
  
Alice and Kate spread a folded beach towel over the box.
 
Then they lay on the ground and reached down and put two bones and a rubber ball on top of the box. Kate tried to get one bone into the box in case she was hungry.
 
“Anything else?” Caroline asked.
 
“The picture. The picture of her babies,” said Alice.
  
Alice and Kate ran into the house and came out with an old photo of Yola with her seven puppies born when she was a young dachshund mother. She was now eleven.
 
“Are you sure you want to bury that?” someone asked.
 
“Yes,” said Alice. And she and Kate lay down again on the ground under the full moon and reached down as far as they could and placed the picture of Yola and her babies on top of the towel which was on top of the box.
 
“Someone has to be first,” Caroline said.
 
And someone was. Stepping out from the group, Jim and Barb’s son, Jimmy who is full-fledged teenager which is often a difficult age, took a shovel and spread dirt over the box.
 
The shovel was passed around. Beth added some dirt. Then Bruce, then Perry, and Jim and Barb and Isobel. Everyone putting dirt in and pausing, then passing the shovel on. Sarah and Lea, who are staying with Caroline and her family, added the final dirt.

But not so. Alice and Kate took the shovel together and together lifted a little more dirt that had been taken out of the hole and returned it to the earth, over the box.
 
Caroline said a two line child’s prayer.
 
Bruce, who doesn’t believe in prayers, bowed his head.
  
“Now Yola is with Grandma Alice,” Caroline said to her daughter who was named after her grandmother who passed away earlier this year. Yola had been Grandma Alice’s dog before it became Little Alice’s. 

“Now Yola is back playing with Grandma,” Caroline told her daughter.
 
Sarah baked a banana and chocolate chip cake. Sometimes you need something sweet. Sometimes that’s as good as a prayer. Everyone who wasn’t on a diet took a piece, then a second. It was a good cake.

Caroline said it was Barb’s recipe.  It’s a good neighbourhood when neighbours swap recipies.
   
And then the doorbell in the front was ringing. The Chinese food was being delivered and everyone knew Yola had a really wonderful walk and would sleep quietly and peacefully, and that was just the way every night should end.

Mike