by L. L. Crane
Lily was mine after that, following me around every step I took. Like Rain and Troll’s Lily, she growled protectively when anyone came by. She was the weather map of who to trust and whom not to trust. A woman alone in the country with three kids needs a Lily.
Lily was loved. Lily was part of our family. Lily was perfect. Daylon, one of Nathan’s friends would come over and yell, “Where’s my perfect dog?” Lily would come thundering in, her tail wagging and her tongue hanging out of her mouth. They would wrestle and carry on for quite some time, a couple of crazy kids.
As things happen in life, my marriage ended, my husband left, and the kids and I were giddy with it. The black cloud that had hovered over our family for years was gone.
Not long after, I met the love of my life. We had gone to high school together, and he looked me up. Even in your late forties, you can fall in love, and we did. We talked on the phone for endless hours after the kids were in bed, and I would tell Tony how much I missed him. “You have Swamp Thing to snuggle with,” he would tell me in a joking voice. He had met Lily, and of course after all that time in the pond, she didn’t exactly smell good. To Tony, Lily would always be Swamp Thing.
After about a year and a half, it was evident that I couldn’t continue with the lifestyle we were used to living. I wasn’t getting child support, had one kid in college and two in high school, and the big house on ten acres that Lily and the rest of us loved so much would have to go. With sad hearts, we moved.
I rented a place to temporarily tide us over, but we had too many dogs. “You’ll have to take Lily,” I told Nathan, who was about twenty by then, living on his own. So, he took Lily. Two days later he returned with her. “She misses, you, Mom,” he told me. “She’s not happy.”
Lily stayed with me.
Just not long enough.
I think Nathan missed Lily, too, because he moved back home not too long after that. The girls, who were fifteen and seventeen, shared a room for the first time in their lives, and Lily would often be flopped on their beds, Nathan’s bed, or my bed. I awoke many mornings, snuggled up to this great big sloppy, happy hound next to me in bed.
Life chugged along like that. We were busy. We were happy. There was a steady parade of teens and college kids in and out of the house. But I wasn’t prepared for what was to come with Lily.
I remember it vividly. Lily had a sore on her stomach that wouldn’t heal. She ended up having two operations and was given a cone to wear to keep her from licking the wound. That cone, and many others, would become a part of Lily that lasted throughout the remainder of her short life. We became accustomed to getting coned again.
I was fretting about Lily. She wasn’t getting any better. Natalie had just graduated from high school, and Tony came for her graduation. The house was full of company, but I made an appointment for Lily at UC Davis. Tony and I loaded the big dog in the back of the 4Runner and she sat in the back seat, happy for a car ride. Lily always loved car rides.
We still laugh about Lily’s cone. She was so big that she regularly ruined them with her huge head, and I got tired of paying for new ones, so we used duct tape to keep the cracks together as long as we could. Of course, I prefer the pretty colors and designs of duct tape, so this particular cone was held together with baby blue and white polka dotted duct tape.
Tony and I checked Lily in and were sent to an elaborate waiting room. It was full of the cleanest, most pure-bred dogs and cats you would ever see. One had his own bed that the owners traveled around with, and here we were with this mutt of a dog with a duct-taped cone. Lily announced her presence as always with a “wooo, wooo, wooo.”
A woman actually came up to me and asked me where I got the decorated cone for my dog. Her dog was “lily” white, perfectly groomed, but had severe allergies and had to live with a cone. I glanced down at Swamp Thing, her huge tongue lolling out of her mouth and her big tail flopping happily against the floor. I told the lady it was just duct tape. She asked me where I got it. I answered, “Wal-Mart, Target.” I was kind of embarrassed. About the duct tape. Not Lily. Never Lily.
We were definitely out of our league at UC Davis, but that that didn’t slow Lily down. She went through the series of tests with a style and grace that no other dog could. By the time we left, though, we knew things weren’t so good with Lily.
The next day I got a call from UC Davis. Lily had cancer, and it had metastasized. I cried, the first of many tears for Lily.
The next week, my daughter Natalie and I took Lily to our local vet. I was sure we could get chemotherapy for Lily, make her life longer. I was selfish. I just didn’t know it at the time. It was early June. Lily hadn’t dropped any weight, hadn’t slowed down much at all. She announced herself as usual when we got to the vet’s.
“Woo, woo, woo,” she howled, wagging her tail ferociously.
The receptionist, without even looking up, said, “Lily’s here.”
We met with Dr. Valeneti, and I will never forget her words. “You could put one hundred thousand dollars into this dog, but it won’t save her.”
Natalie and I cried, and I think I saw a tear in Dr. Valeneti’s eye.
Lily had one more operation, and we took her home to die.
At that time, my youngest daughter, Nicole, was having serious health issues of her own. She and Lily would lie on the floor by the hour, snuggled up next to each other and listen to Awolnation sing, “All I need, all, all I need is you…smiling.”
If ever a dog could smile, even in death, it was Lily.
After her last operation, Lily wasn’t supposed to jump or it would pull all of the stitches out of her stomach. I woke up one morning with Lily on my bed, lying beside me. She smelled of medicine and death. Swamp Thing had disappeared. I snuggled up next to her, knowing it would be the last time I would wake up by her side. It was.
Lily had a host of medications I gave her daily, and each time we took her to the vet, they marveled that she held her weight. I fried hamburger for her and gave her home cooked turkey, chicken, spaghetti, leftovers. Canned dog food went by the wayside. Lily would have nothing but the best.
By late August, Lily quit eating. I tried everything. I don’t know how much money I wasted on meat and foods she once loved, but she turned her nose away from it and would just stand over the air conditioning vent panting.
This went on for three days.
I knew it was time.
I drove to work. Since I owned my own business, I knew I would be alone. I picked up the phone and with shaking hands dialed the number to the vet, tears streaming down my face. I made the appointment to put Lily down. It was the hardest phone call I ever made.
It’s odd when you know someone is going to die. You try not to gauge time by days, hours, or minutes, but that’s what you do. My heart was breaking, thinking that this was just a dog, not a human, not a person. I knew of people who had lost children, spouses. My friend, Robert had just lost his mother to cancer. He held her hand as she left this world. I couldn’t even begin to understand what it was like for them. I just knew what it was like with Lily.
Thursday came too soon, and I loaded Lily up in the 4Runner. By then she was shedding something fierce, and the entire back seat was filled with white hair. For months I left it there, refusing to vacuum up what little I had left of Lily.
The girls drove in Natalie’s pick up and met us at the veterinary clinic. Eric, Natalie’s boyfriend came, too. He loved Lily. Everyone loved Lily.
Lily wagged her tail happily the entire way, and we just talked, the two of us. It was nice to see her without a cone on her head. I had come to associate those damn cones as being part of Lily.
We entered the vet’s office. “Woo, woo, woo,” Lily announced one last time.
We waited our turn, willing them to take their time and also just wanting to get it over with. We were raw as we stroked her, loved her, patted her head. She had no idea we were going to kill her. There’s no other way to put it, but we were killing he
r.
The vet tech, who I can’t even remember now, called for Lily. I wanted to take her leash and run.
But I didn’t. That would only cause more suffering for Lily, and that didn’t seem fair. The only fair thing about it was that we had taken off Lily’s cone for the past couple days. She enjoyed that, the freedom of having that dreadful cone off.
Lily’s last breath was taken with tears of love splashing onto her humungous head. Mine. Natalie’s. Nicole’s. Eric was somewhere in the background, giving us our moment. Nathan said he couldn’t deal with her death. He didn’t come, and I was mad at him. But I understood. Later I would find out his life was changing so quickly that he had his own set of problems. He, like Lily, carried them with grace and style.
By then we had bought a house on six acres, right down the road from our old house where Lily swam endless hours in the pond. We hadn’t moved in yet, but the house was ours.
The kids had been digging a grave at the new property. Lily was coming home with us. She had been abandoned enough.
As we watched Lily’s soul leave, Dr. Valeneti hugged us, and we all cried some more. I had already told them that we were taking Lily home with us. So, the four of us wrapped Lily in one of the girls’ blankets from their childhood. It was pink with little yellow flowers on it.
We carried Lily out to the 4Runner. One hundred pounds of life is heavy. One hundred pounds of death is heavier. Dr. Valeneti herself took an edge of the blanket, helping us lift Lily into the car. I didn’t know if she did this for every dog or just for Lily. I like to think that it was just for Lily.
Lily would have one last car ride.
Nicole rode home with me, with Lily. Eric and Natalie went somewhere. She would leave for college the following day. It was quiet. Too quiet in the back seat. We cried all the way home.
Nicole and I lifted Lily into the grave that had been waiting for her. We settled her in like we were tucking her in for a bedtime story. We got shovels and dug, tossing dirt over her body until she was covered. We hugged each other and cried, dust on our shoes and death on our hearts.
Lily has a grave with a marker on our hill. She is home. Another dog, Teddy passed away after eighteen years of life, and she rests beside Lily, a much smaller grave. We expected her death, and she was kind to us, dying peacefully in the middle of the night. We didn’t get to tell her good-bye. Or as Rain would say, bad-bye. Teddy has a marker as well, only smaller.
But, there’s something about Lily. I still smile when I think of her. I still cry when I think about how we lost her.
I don’t go to her grave very often. I like to think of her life, not her death.
That is why I think that Rain needed Lily. Lily lives on in this book series. I wondered when Rain chose Orion over Troll, who Lily would go with. Who would keep her? It was the same decision my own family had to make so many years ago when we moved. Who would take Lily?
In Vanishing Rain, it only seemed right that Troll should keep Lily. He needed her more. Because Lily then and Lily now goes where she is needed.
All of my kids have flown the coop, two at college, one with children of his own. Every now and then I blast the speakers and play Awolnation singing, “All I need, all, all, I need is you…smiling.” I think of Lily and I feel her smile.
Lily, sunning herself the day after her last surgery, complete with a brand new cone.
I hope that you enjoyed Vanishing Rain and that you’ll help me spread the word by leaving reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Reviews are the best way for those of us who are Indie authors to help readers like you discover our books. Like Lily, we are up against a lot. I try to carry it with grace, but darn, it’s hard sometimes!
You can get in touch with me at any time by emailing me at [email protected]. I love to hear from readers! I would also love to give you any of my books in exchange for a review. Just email me at [email protected], and tell me which book you would like, and I will get it to you.
It’s a great time to be a writer! We have so many opportunities. But it’s also difficult because of the rules we have to play by. Reviews only take a minute to do, and they help us so much!
With a loving heart,
Lisa
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Good-bye
Chapter 2 Plan
Chapter 3 Vanishing
Chapter 4 Tools
Chapter 5 Liquid
Chapter 6 Caught
Chapter 7 Garment
Chapter 8 Haven
Chapter 9 Blush
Chapter 10 Fire
Chapter 11 Fever
Chapter 12 Injection
Chapter 13 Heartbeat
Chapter 14 Fighter
Chapter 15 Practice
Chapter16 Vanish
Chapter17 Rain Drops
Chapter18 Map
Chapter 19 Warning
Chapter 20 Bad-bye
Chapter 21 Free
Chapter 22 Shots
Chapter 23 Hiding
Chapter 24 Dog
Chapter 25 Subway
Chapter 26 Troll
Chapter 27 Beast
Chapter 28 Mutant
Chapter 29 Fingers
Chapter 30 Necklaces
Chapter 31 Wire
Chapter 32 Father
Chapter 33 Promise
Chapter 34 Friends
Chapter 35 Killings
Chapter 36 Waiting
Chapter 37 Run
Chapter 38 Blues
Chapter 39 Acceptance
Chapter 40 Home
Chapter 41 Lordess and Love
Chapter 42 Invitation
Chapter 43 Surprise
Chapter 44 Reunion
Chapter 45 Ice
Chapter 46 Choice
Chapter 47 Arms
Chapter 48 Kick
Chapter 49 Attack
Chapter 50 Kiss
Chapter 51 Shattered Heart
Chapter 52 Go
Chapter 53 Awakened
Chapter 54 Patience
Chapter 55 War
Chapter 56 The Peanut