The summer his best friend died, he drove home from summer school at Drew University the first week of August and discovered waiting for him in his back yard a tiny black Labrador retriever he immediately named Morgan—after the Big Red Machine’s all-star and now Hall of Fame second basemen Joe Morgan, his first favorite baseball player when he was five.[1] Perhaps every person who loses someone close searches for a replacement, for someone or something to fill the void left by death. His wife knew him, intuited his broken heart, and remembered that he had wanted a dog for more than a decade. She bought him Morgan—Morgan the post-modern wonder dog. How does one go on after the worst that can happen happens? Morgan licks away the tears.
R writes his dissertation on summer mornings, alone in the spare basement room that serves as a kind of office. Morgan often lies on the floor under his feet, waiting patiently, or mostly patiently, for the chance to go to the back yard and chase the squeaky pink ball that R bats (hits with a wiffle ball bat, not throws) to him over and over. Morgan lets him know when it is time with a whine, a paw on the leg, a stolen towel from the bathroom. Laubach’s dog, Tip, comforted him on his dark night on Signal Hill. Morgan came to live with R and saved him from suffocating despair.
But it could have turned out so differently; Morgan almost died that first week. He was full of worms, and by the time they took him to the vet, he was badly dehydrated. And R nearly broke down, sick with worry for that tiny creature whom he loved desperately already.
He wonders what might have happened had Morgan not survived the night in that animal hospital. Could this have been enough to destroy a man’s faith in a compassionate God? Perhaps. Perhaps that is why the compassionate God spared Morgan and Morgan’s best friend that day. It’s not Laubach’s Signal Hill experience—with poetry from heaven—but he remembers it as a gift from a kind and merciful God. Not obviously mystical, but mysteriously transformative somehow.
He wonders what might have happened had Morgan not survived the night in that animal hospital. Could this have been enough to destroy a man’s faith in a compassionate God? Perhaps. Perhaps that is why the compassionate God spared Morgan and Morgan’s best friend that day. It’s not Laubach’s Signal Hill experience—with poetry from heaven—but he remembers it as a gift from a kind and merciful God. Not obviously mystical, but mysteriously transformative somehow.
To this day he struggles to make sense of how the grace of God comes incarnate in a creature who has grown to eighty plus pounds, occasionally eats his own vomit, goes berserk for the mailman, and spears him in the groin several times a day.
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[1] Joe Morgan played second base in the major leagues from 1963-1984. He played for the World Champion Cincinnati Reds in 1975, and hit a homerun the day I attended my first ever major league game that summer. I played second base in pee-wee league, too. He was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990, and has since worked as a color commentator and baseball analyst for ESPN. When I named my dog Morgan, I didn’t realize one similarity the two Morgan’s shared. Joe Morgan was a Gold Glover at second base. I can still see in my mind’s eye the way he would field ground balls. The other Morgan, without the help of a baseball glove, is an amazing fielder as well. I hit him hundreds of balls every week. He won’t chase the thing if I just throw it!
1 comment:
There is a book called "Animals Can Be Almost Human." I recently found the first-edition, hard cover version on the internet for one penny, but I think you would like it. It has many stories like this one, where an animal helped a human through an event or helped him to better self-awareness somehow.
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