Remembering Grizzly: A Memoir of Loss

Grizzly

I had been sitting on my chair by the white table, with all my homework on it. When my sister ,Cassidy, came into the room, “ what are you doing?” she asked.

“ My memoir for class,” I answered.

“Oh I remember when I had to do that, I did it on Grizzly and all the memories we had,” she said.

“Really well I am doing it on the death of Grizzly” I said.
A second later it occurred to me and I said “wait Cassidy, do you think that I could see your memoir, so I could see if I missed anything?”

She nodded her head, went to grab it. While grabbing it, she started telling how she found him dead, and I could see that she was on the verge of tears.

It was a typical day, my sister and I just came back from school, when she decided to go feed the dogs. She started

walking towards the door in the dining room, and when she open the door, she knew something was wrong. When she went outside into the garage and she smelled an odd odor. Then she saw it. She saw Maze smelling Grizzly and flies all around them. She remember that in that moment she knew that he had passed away.

I remember that I went to go and look for her after she did not come back in for a while. The garage door was open and I found it strange that the dogs were not barking like they usually did. When I saw him, I thought that he was sleeping. It was not until I saw my sister and all her tears that I realized that he was actually dead.. Looking back at it now, I was so naive. After a couple of minutes of me standing there I remember hoping that this wasn’t real that this was just a dream. It was not until later that I realized that I did not cry. I was sad but I just could not cry. I don’t know why, I guess I was in shock.

We had a funeral for him and I remember writing a letter for Grizzly. The letter, had a picture that I drew of our family my mom, my dad, my sisters,my other dog, grizzly, and me. I remember just sitting there and writing the letter about how I wished he was still alive.
When either I or my sister would get sad I remember that my parents would sit by us and tell us that “Grizzly wanted to be alone when he died he didn’t want us to shed tears for him”.

My uncle Jp came over that day and helped my dad dig the grave and place Grizzly into the grave. It was a sad day for everyone, we all miss him and wish the him the best.

Maze ,my other dog, kept on sitting by the door, the door were Grizzly would usually come out through and play with him. I think Maze did that because Grizzly and him were like best friends and they would always be play together. It took Maze a couple of months to realize that Grizzly was no longer with us.

I remember him and Grizzly would just lay there together and they would get along really well. I also remember when Grizzly had one of his last surgeries Maze kept him company inside this playpen my parents had built him. Maze was just a puppy when this happened and he was so eager to play with Grizzly that he got his head stuck in one of the holes in the playpen. I remember this being really funny because my dad had to get butter to get his head out, I kept on laughing and even to this day I have a smile on my face when I think about

it.

I have a lot of good and bad memories from both of my dogs. I am happy to have the memories I have of Grizzly. It is important to keep important memories close, but also we shouldn’t let them rule our present or future.