A Somerset Lad

Buses to the city centre run through the estate, travelling in via one road and out along another. The bus route roads have mini-roundabouts at their junctions with other roads.

Walking back from school, two small boys on bicycles were going around and around one of the mini-roundabouts, an annoyance to drivers passing through and, more importantly, a danger to themselves.

The bicycles were shiny and new, probably Christmas gifts, and had presumably been bought to last a few years because they were big for the boys.

They broke from their circling of the roundabout and pedalled in my direction.

“Mister, do I know you?” asked the larger of the pair.

It was an impossible question to answer. “Do you?” I asked.

“Do you live at Lansdowne Gate?”

“I do,” I said.

“Do you remember that we met you in the car park?”

I did. I had gone down to the underground car park beneath the apartment complex to check the post box and found four children running amongst the cars.

“I do remember, it was the day when the government closed the schools because it was windy. How are you today?”

“We’re good, mister. We came to see a friend but now we can’t find our way back.”

It seemed a mark of how young they were that they had no smartphone to which to turn for directions.

“Where do you live?”

“Lansdowne Gate, that’s why we asked you.”

“Ah,” I said, “if you go along this road until you reach Slieve Bloom Road, and turn right there, you’ll see your way back.”

“I know where you mean,” said the spokesman for the duo.

“Will you be careful riding back. It’s Friday afternoon. The roads are busy.”

“We will, mister.”

And off they went, straight through the roundabout without looking in either direction.

I sighed and walked on as they disappeared up the road, making steady progress straight down the middle.

There was an odd moment of happiness. The encounter seemed like something from long ago, something from a different age.

It was from a time when people lived in communities where, even if you didn’t know a person’s name, you knew them to see. It was from a time when small boys could go out on their bicycles without fear. It was from a time when a conversation with an adult was not something to cause concern.

Perhaps better times are coming.

Looking in the mirror, I sometimes see a small boy looking back at me. The boy looks curious, wondering what his older self has become.  How many things did he not foresee?

I remember a story told by a man who was among the few truly great people I have met. It was a story about himself as a boy, a boy who believed he had anticipated the years that lay ahead.

It was a carols by candlelight evening in a pretty little church in the country. Every single seat was taken and there was a wonderful sense of it being a moment that was special.

He had asked not to do a reading, but to tell a story, a personal story.

After a musical piece, he walked up the nave and stood holding both sides of the wooden lectern. He smiled at the congregation and in his soft German accent said, “I would like to tell you a story.”

The story he told came from the Germany of the late-1920s. It told of a small boy’s delight at it being Christmas. It described the scene and the tastes and the mood. It talked about the boy’s joy at receiving a new sleigh as his Christmas present. Allowed to go out of the house in the afternoon, the boy went to a nearby hill where he spent the afternoon pulling the sleigh up the hill and descending with great excitement.

“The boy realized that the sun had set and that it was time to return to his home.

At that moment, the boy realized that he was alone. He realized that he would live alone and that, when he died, he would die alone.

I know that this story is true because that boy is me.”

The storyteller was a hero, a man who was regarded as a friend by all who knew him, a man who was known for his kindness and generosity.

There was a silence in the church. We did not know what to make of the story. Why had it been important? Why had the man whom we so much loved and admired felt that he wanted to tell such a sad story?

I remember standing to announce the next carol and having no words adequate to the moment, nothing that would not sound trite and vacuous.

Had he really anticipated the life he would lead? Had he really realized at such an early age that he would spend years living a solitary existence?

Looking in the mirror, I wish I had had such a gift of prescience.

Holly, the much-loved terrier of friends, had her last day today.

There was a sense of heartbreak watching her lying in her basket when I visited last night. The gentle and friendly animal who had spent eleven of her fifteen years with my friends, lay unmoving in her basket. Her eyes were closed, her legs trembled, and it seemed that the medication prescribed by the vet had not worked.

Holly’s sad figure recalled the deaths of the dogs I had loved much over the years – Maeve, Paddy, Bella, a Holly of our own, and Millie. Each of them were better friends than most people I have known.

A friend who had teenage children once commented that he was glad that he had a pet dog because it meant that there was at least someone who was pleased to see him when he came home.

My friends’ dog Holly was the sort of dog who always gave you a friendly greeting. She was a dog who was always glad to welcome visitors. She was a dog who enjoyed the society of humans and who enriched the lives of those with whom she lived.

Anyone who believes in the Kingdom of Heaven and who would assert that there is no place for dogs in such a realm has not understood the moral superiority of dogs over much of humanity, (nor have they understood Saint Paul’s belief that the whole creation will receive liberation).

Anyone who does not believe in the Kingdom of Heaven and asserts that dogs are an ethically inferior species has not enjoyed the companionship of creatures like my friends’ dog.

It has been suggested that people use pets as an “emotional crutch.” Perhaps they do, perhaps the dogs I remembered with sadness as I stood and contemplated poor Holly last night were a reflection of personal inadequacy, personal insecurity.

Yet, if dogs are an emotional crutch, what are most human relationships? If one exists in a post-modern, relativist world, why are humans regarded as a superior species? One does not need to subscribe to the philosophy of Pete Singer and his ideas about speciesism to accept that dogs are significant friends for many people.

Dogs like Holly are loyal and faithful. They are not capricious, not inclined to discard those who have been friends to them.

Talking with my friends, I recounted the day I buried my dog Bella in 2015.  With my eyes filled with tears, I buried her against the wall of the garden in which she had spent so many happy hours. I took a piece of stone and scratched Romans 8:21 onto the wall.

Paul wrote, “creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay.” In that spirit, may poor old Holly rest in peace and rise in glory.