All Dogs Go to Heaven

I keep seeing the attack over and over in my head.

It was just supposed to be a normal walk home. She had done it over and over before without anything going wrong, but this time something did go wrong, VERY WRONG.

She was almost home, I bet she could see out front door, was humming one of her favorite tunes maybe. Eliza has always been the type to randomly sing out words she makes up on her own, she kept telling me she wanted to be like me someday, write stories and poems and change the world.  I don’t doubt she could’ve done it.

That’s when the dogs came bursting out of our neighbor’s front door. They were barreling down the street at top speed, or so says my younger brother who had been walking with her, holding her hand and skipping along down the street like to little munchkins following the yellow brick road.

I wish I could’ve been there when they knocked her down, when my younger brother Virgil had ran like crazy for home, screeching at the top of his lungs that Eliza was bleeding everywhere and needed help.

Where was I? Why didn’t I walk with them? All I remember was arriving at the hospital and seeing my younger, only sister in a bloodied mess, leg and arm ripped to shreds, her whole backside practically eaten, and her in panicked convulsions, wailing that she didn’t want to die.

I keep seeing the dogs ripping at her clothes, gnawing at her flesh so hard they rip right through it. I keep seeing her grief-stricken face, so horrified and alone.  I should have been there to help her, I am her older sister and that is my job. That is why my father had to leave in the first place, because I was protecting my sister against an evil man by not telling anyone what he was doing to me. I didn’t want him to do to her what he was doing to me, I needed her to keep her innocence, her freedom, her happiness. Now it’s gone, I don’t see it in her eyes. I’ve spent all these years protecting her against a man that’s only existed in my mind, who hasn’t even been around me or her. I haven’t really been protecting her from anything, she is still hurt, she was still traumatized and now all I see in her eyes are empty, dead sockets as she lies in her hospital bed.

She’s not going to be able to survive through the 15 surgeries needed to repair all the damage. She’s not strong enough to withstand something like that, and even if she does she won’t be able to be that strong the rest of her life, live with that pain. I know my sister, she is too much like me. Unable to control the hurt, tell someone how you’re really feeling, what you really think about yourself. I know what she’s thinking, that this is all her fault, that she doesn’t deserve to live for being so stupid, I know. I have been in her same place.

The evil I thought I was protecting her from has now been transformed into another form, but it is still torture, pain, guilt. It is still waking up in the morning and dreading that you’ve lived through another night, or going to school and looking at the other children with contempt, because their lives are ordinary, they are ordinary, and you no longer get to be like them.

And yet, even though my sister may die, I still pray for those dogs that attacked her. I still feel sorry for them, it was only instinct, it was only the smell of our dogs on my sister that made them react the way that they did, you cannot blame a dog for it’s DNA. I wish they didn’t have to put them down, and I know my sister feels the same way. That is the difference between her and I, she is a forgiving person.  She would pet and hug those dogs in a second if they were brought in to her, she would do that with any animal. That is where the guilt comes from, thinking you have just ended two lives, two precious animal lives, because of a scent that you had on you and a clueless three year old who left the front door open at his home. I know it is not her fault, but I know she feels it is, and that is going to kill her inside, as it does me. But I will be there for her no matter what happens, I will hold her hand and tell her not to be afraid, because God will take care of her, even if I don’t really believe that myself. But I can pray, and I can hope.

I hope all dogs go to heaven.