Late Lilly

Opened her eyes in our palms.

I don’t know so much about dogs and their breeds. When my friends discuss about them I just keep quite and think about my dog which lived with us 13 years ago. That was the only living being which showed us her complete life-cycle. We knew her since she was at the size of my palm. It started living with us even before opening her eyes. I remember the day when my dad shouting on me when I was trying to open her eyes. Poor dog, she didn’t even see the mother who gave birth to her and didn’t even drink her own mother's milk more than two days.

When Lilly was 2 days old, her mother met with an accident and had to leave this world making her four children as orphans. Lilly was the un-chosen one among the four puppies. Thanks to humanity in our street. Some one chose a complete white puppy, someone…a male puppy, someone a complete brown puppy, but I don’t know why nobody chosen our Lilly. Finally we took her only because nobody was taking her. We had grown her like one of our family members. My dad taught us how to feed a puppy. First we would boil the milk, and make sure that the milk is lukewarmly boiled and fill in a small bottle which my dad prepared with a rubber nipple fixed on the bottle mouth. I used to fight with my brothers to feed her. I found that as a very cute activity. We were very much eager to see her eyes open, couple of times I tried opening her eyes by force and my dad shouted on me. Even before touching my tooth brush, every morning I would go to her to see how it was and how much it grew. She was really a beautiful dog with light brown spots on white fur. Among all the puppies she was most beautiful. Really she used to look pretty. When her fur was started growing with her age, it started looking even more beautiful.

She was very familiar with the whistles we made and the sound of her steel bowl. Wherever she was she would come to us swinging her tail with utmost love. My dad liked Lilly very much and she also liked him very much. I remember her pulling down my dad’s trousers when he was wearing it, she means she doesn’t want my dad to go out of the home. How lovely it was.

Lilly gave birth to two puppies, unfortunately one died with overgrowth and another one died with underweight. I don’t what we call that disease, infection or whatever in medical terms and I don’t know what was happened exactly, but that was the reason I was told. I was too young to understand all these things. After that thrice it gave birth to the puppies and none of them could live for more than few days. That means Lilly has no children on this earth. Every time she carried we used to feel happy dreaming about the growing both mother and children at a time. We hoped of having lot of fun with small Lillis. We thought of sharing and expecting the love of which Lilly got. But we were not fortunate enough to see the small Lillis. So our Lilly was "never before and never again" kind of dog for us.

Closed her eyes in our arms...

Lilly lived with us for more than seven years. All of a sudden, she started behaving oddly. She used to hide in dark places without eating or drinking anything. She spent like that for few months. We were not aware of such situations for a dog so we did not take any care of her because of our busy lives. One day, I still remember that was on Saturday, the reason why I am so confident about the week is, the uniform which I was wearing on that day, i.e., white and white. I think I used to look handsome when I was a kid, if not why would my couple of class teachers call me black beauty? Ok, that was on Saturday, I reached home at around 1 o’ clock, and I had noticed my brothers and father were doing something in the hall. They were cleaning the blood of Lilly which came out of Lily’s mouth and my eldest brother was ready to wrap the dead body of Lilly in a gunny bag and burry her at our village outskirts. I just went to her and touched her part where she has soft fur and patted her twice. After seeing that situation I did not feel anything –absolutely nothing. I really just felt nothing, I was very normal as usual.

A day after, that was Sunday, I was normal; I didn’t feel sad about Lilly. Sunday was over, and then Monday, I went to tuition at 6am and started studying. After sometime my tutor came and seated in his chair and before talking to anybody he asked me about Lilly “Hey Sam, is it true that Lilly was dead?” That was all, I still remember the way how I said ‘yes’. Just imagine, you are studying 8th standard and your father or class teacher comes to you and slaps you four times for a small mistake. How would you feel? How would you react? You cry like anything with all tears coming non-stop from your eyes. In the same manner I had outburst myself before my tutor when he asked me about Lilly’s death. All other students suddenly stopped studying and turned their faces at me and I was crying severely. That means something deep inside my heart or my subconscious mind told me that Lilly was no more for me.

Moral of the story: If you love someone truly, take care of them at any situation. Otherwise there is a chance of losing them forever.