They tell you that time heals all wounds, but that’s a lie. Time doesn’t heal; it just buries. For six years, the grief for my wife, Sarah, was a dull, constant ache in my chest.
They said she was lost to the ocean, swallowed by a rogue wave off the Mendocino coast during a freak storm. They found her kayak splintered against the rocks and her life vest tangled in seaweed. They found enough to declare her dead, to give us a funeral with an empty casket, and to tell me and our two small children to move on.
So I tried. I learned to be both mom and dad. I learned to pack school lunches, to braid my daughter’s hair, and to answer the impossible questions that started with “Why?” But there was one member of our family who flat-out refused to move on: Buddy.
Buddy was our old golden retriever, but he was always Sarah’s dog. He followed her everywhere, his tail a constant, thumping metronome of adoration. And after she was gone, he started a ritual that drove me half-mad.
He refused to go near the water. The same waves he used to leap into with joyous abandon now made him whine and tuck his tail between his legs. Instead, every single morning, rain or shine, he would sprint out the back door and run straight for the cliffs overlooking the very cove where Sarah had vanished.
He’d stand at the edge, barking. Not a playful bark, but a frantic, desperate, heart-wrenching sound aimed directly at the unmoving wall of rock. Friends and family told me it was just a dog’s grief, that I should keep him on a leash, that he was getting old and confused.
But he was never confused. His mission was precise. For 2,190 days, he ran to the same spot and barked at the same rocks, a four-legged soldier standing vigil for a ghost.
I couldn’t bear to watch him, so mostly, I didn’t. Until today. The fog was so thick this morning you could taste the salt in it.
The world was shades of gray, and the mournful bellow of the foghorn was the only sound besides the ocean’s heavy sigh. When I let Buddy out, he shot off like a bullet into the mist. But today, instead of turning away, something inside me broke.
A wave of exhaustion, of needing an answer I knew I’d never get, washed over me. For the first time in six years, I followed him. I found him right where I knew he’d be, his golden fur a lonely splash of color against the gray stone, his barks echoing in the dense air.
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