A BOY & HIS DOG. Pts. 1-5

I dated my wife, Jean, immediately after our graduation from high school, and knew her sister, Sue Long, and Sue’s husband, Clarence. I recall little Wade as a toddler, and after Jean and I met again, Wade and I renewed our acquaintance. Wade was in high school at the time. My nephew sustained the worst symptoms of a condition known as Spina Bifida, and was a paraplegic; not having any feeling or function in his legs, and was confined to a wheelchair throughout his entire life.

It is important to understand that among anyone and everyone I ever knew who suffered with an almost unbearable medical condition, Wade seemed to tolerate it in the most extraordinary manner.

Simply put,                                                                       

…He was Joyful. With a capital “J.”

I never, I mean NEVER saw Wade without a smile on his face. That grin would light up a room. Those shining, white “32’s” could almost literally light up the entire universe. Had you asked him, he would have attributed his contagious personality and attitude to the presence of His Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, in his young life.

Wade endured countless surgeries during the brief 19 years which were allotted to him. Though he grew weary, he never seemed to complain.

The dear boy was the consummate singer. A soloist. While he never appeared on “The Voice,” what he lacked in vocal talent was more than made up for by the fervency and volume of his music. He sang about the Jordan River; until anyone who ever heard him might immediately think of Wade when that body of water was alluded to.

I came across an old audio tape a couple of years ago, and snapped it into the player. From across the years Wade seemed to delight in one more opportunity to light up a room with his voice.

He prefaced his solo with

“Uncle Royce, we’re gonna meet Jesus one day. There will be no more tears. And it will be fine!"

Pt. 2

Readers, I felt compelled to provide you the previous entre into the life of a dear young man named Wade; prior to relating one rather important facet of his existence.

For you see, Wade owned a dog; (or perhaps, as the old adage goes, ‘the dog owned him’).

But to begin at the beginning.

I continue my story with an account by my sister-in-law, Sue, Wade’s mother.

“The year was 1982, and I was enjoying my daily walk in the fair City of Bartow, and this ‘Heinz-57’ style pooch began following me, and was at my heels all the way back to my vehicle; which I’d parked at the post office. I had attempted to discourage her from following me, but as she and I were forced to cross a couple of major roads, I naturally kept her close to protect her from traffic. She and I must have presented an unlikely duo, as we came to a halt next to my car door.”

We will rejoin Sue momentarily, but it occurs to me that as she came to a halt next to her automobile my sister-in-law, (much like ‘Mrs. Faixfax’ in the Victorian novel, “Jane Eyre”) might have mused,

“What to do? What to do?”

“I had a decision to make, and as it seemed to me that this non-descript pooch had gone to a great deal of effort to team up with me and walk as far as she did, and since I had a deserving son at home, who could not help but love and cherish her, with only the slightest hesitation I grabbed the unlikely canine around the waist, and shoved her into the passenger seat.”

(and)

“Of course, I observed the hairy critter as I drove the eight or ten minutes home. The dog was less than a year old, black and a proverbial ‘ball of fur.’ When I arrived home I dropped the somewhat bedraggled pooch into the bed with my husband, Clarence, and she began licking him like he was an old friend. When my son, Wade arrived home from school, she jumped up into his lap, as he sat in his wheelchair, and gave him much the same treatment as she had my husband.”

(and)

“Given the physical characteristics of our newly adopted dog, you might imagine how easy it was to come up with a name.

We called her,

…Fluffy!”

Pt. 3       

Sue continues her story.

“From that time forward Fluffy virtually lived on Wade’s lap. Whenever we returned from visiting, shopping or some miscellaneous errand, and drove into the yard, Fluffy would greet our van, spring onto the wheelchair lift, and take her customary ride to the ground with him. No one could deny, she was Wade’s dog.”

While Spina Bifida is not always a terminal condition, in terms of the physiological challenges with which Wade contended, it almost always is.

And as Providence would have it, Wade ultimately succumbed to his malady. And, I think, God dispatched a very special angel to assist him with his journey across that great divide which separates heaven and earth.

“The first few times we came home without Wade, Fluffy would meet our van, and stand looking at the door; from whence our son routinely made his appearance. However, when she realized the lift wasn’t being lowered, and her favorite human did not appear, she surrendered any further attempt to greet her bewilderingly absent owner, and remained on the porch swing.”

Wade’s precious pooch just seemed to give up, and it was all Sue or Clarence could do to get her to eat anything. Within weeks, Fluffy met her own special angel; (and at least I like to think, he looked a great deal like

… Wade).

Sue has surmised that the little creature died, not so much from hunger, as from a

…broken heart.”

(And who can say? Perhaps in the grand scheme of things there was something intuitive about the fluffy little pooch, and perhaps unconsciously, she took the only approach available to her; by which she might rejoin her dearly departed companion).

Pt. 4

Wade’s headstone was inscribed with his name, the perfunctionary dates, and (fittingly) a musical staff,

and the notation,

“Our Beloved Son”

“It Won’t Be Long”

Only recently I saw a photograph of another headstone which for the parents, families and friends of the disabled speaks volumes.

The granite marker has at its summit the scale model of a wheelchair, and its former occupant. ‘Former’ since the little boy is now…standing, with his arms reaching upwards, and with his eyes fixed on the sky.

As I survey the photo further, I notice His father or mother has adorned the chair with a couple of less permanent additions; a handful of flowers, and a small, white teddy bear.

When I mentioned the picture to Wade’s mother, she acknowledged that he had seen and commented on that very photo, and affirmed that, one day, he intended to do very much the same thing.

And it occurs to me that had the headstone been tailor-made for Wade, rather than the teddy bear, a stuffed replica of a ‘fluffy’, black, mixed breed pooch would have replaced it in the seat of the wheelchair.

Pt. 5

There’s a popular cartoon which depicts St. Peter standing at heaven’s gate, and a small pooch beneath his feet; scrambling to greet a newcomer. In the foreground an aged man can be seen approaching the duo.

With this, St. Peter exclaims,

“So you’re little Bobby. Well, Rex here has been ‘going on and on’ about you for the last 50 years!"

Well, in this case Master Wade preceded his precious Fluffy, and the two were only separated for a matter of weeks. But, no doubt, the two experienced quite a reunion, and I think that all of heaven must have celebrated along with them.

It must have been a bit confusing for Fluffy to see Wade bounding up heaven’s steps; supported by legs as strong as his heart and spirit had always been.

I can see them now

Running and romping and rampaging amongst the multi-colored meadows of heaven; bedecked with every flower of the rainbow. And the joy which filled up Wade’s life on earth has proven to be a dim reflection of the incomparable joy which now threatens to overwhelm both him, and his precious pooch.

No, (as his headstone infers) it won’t be long ‘til we’re all together again. Wade and his mother and father and sister. His family and his friends. We’ll all be reunited again.

…Just across that river about which Wade so often sang.

But until then, I think my dear nephew’s days will be filled up with a pleasure so surreal and so sublime, and that he and Fluffy will wile the hours doing the kind of things

…that a boy and his dog do.       

by William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "McDonald's Daily Diary." Vol. 33. Copyright pending.

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