[Dailydrool] Birthday celebrations for those at the Bridge

[Elizabeth]

In our family we always celebrate the anniversaries and birthdays (when known) of the dogs in our home. I bake a dog-friendly peanut butter-carrot cake, put carrot stick “candles” on it, take a photo of the anniversary/birthday hound with his/her cake, and sing to the dog whose odometer has just clicked over another year. 

Last March 27 was the first in our new home in Indianapolis. It also would have been the thirteenth anniversary of the day our late Elsinore Basset became ours (thank you Basset Hound Rescue of Alabama). The feelings of surreality and numbness after her death in 2015 were starting to wear off, and I was beginning to actively miss her. So I decided to mark her anniversary the way I used to when she was still alive, only this time her cake didn’t have any candles on it. Young Charlie Basset, the Wee One, and I sang “Happy anniversary, dear Elsa B., we sure do miss you” and then enjoyed her cake and talking about her.  

Then November 15, what would have been our late Jane Basset’s twenty-fourth anniversary rolled around, and I made a cake, sang to her, and told Charlie why he would have really liked her. His mischievousness and her sense of humor would have been quite a combination. 

I decided I like continuing to celebrate the special days of hounds dead and gone. So a couple days ago we celebrated what would have been Elsinore’s fourteenth anniversary. Charlie, the Wee One, and I sang to her, ate her cake, and shared our favorite memories of her and what we miss about her. 

Writing this makes me think it all sounds rather like a wake instead of a birthday or anniversary celebration. But wakes can be joyful as well as sorrowful, and they’re a way to invite the return of good, happy memories. 

Elizabeth