Puppy Palace

There’s a lady who walks the same route I do in the morning. She wears a floppy hat and knee-hi’s and she carries an umbrella to shield herself from the sun. Each morning we pass each other, nod and say only one word, “Morning.”
On this morning, as I walk, thoughts on the only subject now, Woody - Where, really, do dogs go when they die? Where is he right now? –the Woman With the Floppy Hat called out to me from across the street, where there is no sidewalk but lots more shade.
At first it sounded like, “The Towers!” from across the passing traffic so I turned and looked and she pointed to my side of the street, just up ahead of me and said what she said in the beginning:
“Look at the flowers! The flowers!”
I look up ahead of me and a little to the right and there is the answer to my question, Where’s Woody now? :
A field of tiny white Star of Bethlehem flowers, peppering the grass that used to be green, and alone.
There is only one answer to Death:
Life.
****

CRAZY DOG WALKING

I walk outside every day, morning and afternoon, when we used to walk the most. In the house, I’ve been walking in circles a lot. I don’t know what else to do.
“I miss you,” I whisper to his burial spot. The only reason I whisper this is so the neighbors don’t think I’ve gone completely bonkers, even though I am pretty certain that I have.
Curiously, I don’t care, either.
Really, now. Where is he? He cannot go anywhere without me. This is silly. Woody, come out now. Please.
If I could only smell his little white head again…
Please.
A yellow butterfly nearly crashes into my forehead. My arms feel like lead; I don’t even try to wave it away. Wait a minute, where was I? That butterfly interrupted me. Oh, yes, Sadness. A yellow butterfly interrupted my sadness.
Huh?
Suddenly I think of Cher, in Moonstruck, slapping Nicholas Cage across the face and barking, “Snap out of it!”.
A thought pops into my head like a two-word brain-slap:
Puppy Palace.
*

I careen into the Puppy Palace parking lot, sweating. This is crazy.
Nothing new there.
I enter a virtual Romper Room of baby dogs: all breeds, shapes and sizes in playpens lined with shredded newspaper: a fuzzy German Shepherd pup happily falls over a Yellow Lab puppy; a baby Chihuahua the size a measuring cup and a tiny dachshund run little circles around a floppy-eared cocker spaniel; a sleepy-eyed King Charles spaniel snoozes next to what looks to be a tiny black teddy bear.
“Toy Pom,” says a voice behind me and a young man with kind eyes and a shop apron on says, “Here, hold ‘im.”
“Oh, no, I …”
A roly-poly Maltese with paws the size of thimbles waddles across the playpen.
“How ‘bout this one?” He scoops him up with his other hand. Before I can object he plops the little poof ball into my hand.
At barely over a pound, the vet had to use kitten shots on him. She gently touched his deformed front paw, the one that looked like the state of Michigan, and as Woody covered her hand with tiny pink kisses she said, “This is going to cause him some arthritis when he gets a little older.”
I stroke the pup’s belly, rounder than Woody’s ever was. Worms? No, maybe health. Woody was so frail in his final days. How could I expect him to hold on to that body that gave him so much pain? How selfish am I?
The little pup gazes up into my eyes and then buries his dot-sized nose in the crook of my arm. He rests his head on my heart and in no time is fast asleep, his little round belly rising and falling smoothly, like a furry balloon – not labored and ragged, like Woody’s breathing was, in those final days.
“Oh, now, that’s a happy puppy,” PP guy says.
I smell the sleeping puppy’s head. It smells what “warm” smells like, but not like Woody’s, and that’s okay.
After awhile, I carefully lower the sleeping little dog back down into his pen, next to what looks to be his big brother. He nuzzles in next to him, belly to belly.
“Bye, for now,” I whisper to him, with a little wave. What a geek. I was afraid he’d start to cry, like puppies do. He raised his head and looked at me, then lowered his chin and peacefully went back to sleep, next to his brother, as if to say, “I’m okay here.”
That was all I needed to hear.
My face feels weird: for the first time in weeks, I am smiling.
*