Barney the Brave

My big, beautiful Barney the Brave has lymphoma. A Southern Black Mouth Yellow Cur (remember Ole Yeller?) who showed up on the farm battered and abused, has become our beloved companion. Dogs, even the pesky ones, always come into our lives bearing gifts for our spirits and Barney had a Santa Claus sack full of soul for me.
Men wearing baseball caps and anyone with a camera received the full court barking press from Barney. The UPS man leaves my packages with Jeannie now if I am not at home. Yet, he is unfailingly tender with the old and the young. The first person who was able to touch him was a child. When the grandchildren come for visits, he wants to be with them.
No one is perfect and Barney has his share of bad habits...barking at any motorized vehicle, chewing the bumper as he runs in front of said moving vehicle, barking loudly at perceived life threatening dangers in the night. The gifts of his spirit have leavened my frustration with his big mouth bark and car herding, however.
Barney has such courage. Whether he is confronting coyotes, bears or his fear of being touched, his stand up in your face courage inspires me. I have watched him on our front porch, struggling with his fear of our front door, yearning to be inside yet unable to step over the threshold. And then, out of the blue, you can see him take a deep breath, gird up his loins and rush through the door to come be with the family.
Barney has given me the gift of his love and trust. After abuse from my kind, he risked loving again, trusting a human again, let himself be loved. When I sit on the front porch step, he comes to sit beside me, nudging me for hugs. We sit in quiet loving kindness, side by side, friends. Wednesday as we waited at the vet’s for his chemotherapy to begin, he climbed up on the bench, laid down beside me and put his head in my lap. Leaving him at the vet’s feels like a betrayal but he never holds it against me. Forgiveness is his strong suit.
We don’t know yet if the chemo will work. One of the tumors is proving resistant to the medicine so far. I tremble at the thought of losing Barney, my special friend, as I enter the season of Lent and Loss. Life and love do not come with any guarantees save one... if you love truly and generously, your heart will be broken sooner or later. Barney teaches me that it is worth the pain price to love and be loved. We have rescued one another.
The most ardent atheist or failsafe fundamentalist of any religious persuasion cannot say with absolute certainty what happens after death. What we believe about life (or no life) after death is an article of faith for us all since none of us living have died and come back. Lent is a journey into death... Jesus’ death and our own. We are reminded of our limits, have our shortcomings highlighted in flashing neon during the quiet darkness of Lent, catch glimpses of our glorious and inglorious selves if we are paying attention.
Together Barney and I will journey through Lent with no assurances of a happy ending. And yet, in the midst of the darkness, a faint glimmer, a lightening bug of hope, flies towards us. As long as love lives, life will not end. Saint Paul was right. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. We, Barney and I, are held by Love That Will Not Let Us Go, and that is enough for this Lent, and for our life and death.