Losing Boaz – Sort of an Essay or a Story.
– Lloyd Thayne
I was thinking about something that I wrote a long, long time ago. Taking a moment, I realize it was 2003. Here in 2024, I mentioned this to Ed. He might like to read it.
At the time, this was an email that I sent to my nephew Eric. He was telling me about how much work time he spent on his computer.
Lloyd Thayne
06/03/03 02:22 PM
To: Eric
cc: Jeremiah
Subject: RE: the world I work in
“... the product of my endless nights working on the computer'' -
Eric,
I have a story to tell you. I don't know why, but your words make me think of it.
This is real.
I'm not making any of this up. I'm typing this just off the cuff, so my apologies for grammatical nonsense..
We Lived in Ogden...
When I was younger, there such a time as this. Denise and I lived in Ogden. I don't know if you remember the little house we lived in. It was a little one bedroom house, situated behind another house. The two shared a driveway and pad, but the house had it's own back yard that you could get to through the back gate or the kitchen door.
The house was really great. The rent was only $200 a month and it was just right for our budget. I was going to school at Weber State college and Denise had just started working as a teacher at Lynn Elementary school. We were in the chips now. Up until then, I'd worked two part time jobs while Denise got her teaching degree, sometimes we lived on food given to us by friends that gardened. And ramen. I remember lots of ramen, sometimes with peas.
Boaz
Our big indulgence at the time was little Lhasa Apso puppy named Boaz. He was a lively little guy, lots of fun to play with, but just the perfect hint of laziness to keep him out from underfoot. He was our little baby. We got him just before I quit working at KANN radio, and he'd hang out with me on the evening shift, while Denise took classes or worked on homework.
We had strange neighbors at our place. First, the house in front of us was the home of some nuns, they were sweet and kind. But they moved to another spot soon after we arrived there. For a time, a mixed family lived there. I don't really remember them very well, a single mom, her son and a sister are what I recall. In any case, the single mom had just gotten a dog too. A pit bull, of all things. They pretty much took good care of their dog, but it was a little bit of a problem for them, they found, to keep it chained up in their 'back yard' which amounted to the car pad between our houses.
School and Work
I was taking classes for the first time in about 5 years, among the oldest people in my classes, though not as old as the 'nontraditional' types
40 year old women, most of them terrified to be among so many 'kids'). One of the classes that I was taking was a Programming class in Pascal, one of those typical “learn to program raw” classes. This was terribly interesting stuff to me, I was fascinated with the language and the idea of writing code to make a computer actually 'do' something.
One spring morning, I was getting ready to go to school, and it was such a nice day that I thought I'd tie Boaz up in the back yard near his little dog house, instead of making him wait for me inside the house while I went. My schedule was light that day, two one-hour classes and an hour's lab. He'd be fine. As I was getting into the car, my neighbor stopped me and asked if I'd be back soon.
“Well, I'm on my way to school. I should be back around 12 or 1. What's up?” said I.
“I need to go somewhere until this afternoon, and” she motioned to her pit bull beside her, “I was wondering if you could watch my dog”.
I am such a helpful fellow. We quickly worked out a way to tie up her dog near ours, and I made my way to school.
School was fun, and interesting to me after all that time working part time jobs, it was good to be learning again. I did my classes and then at 11am went to my lab. I had to write a Pascal application that would do some simple math, and print out the statements. I worked on it a while, and it got pretty difficult. I kept running into things I didn't quite understand, and I spent a lot of time experimenting. The power even went out (I think) during that time, because of a thunderstorm.
By the time I left the lab, I was really hungry, it was after 4 pm! We'll, I'd be home in time to make dinner for Denise and I before we left for a weekend trip to Salt Lake to visit family for Easter.
It rained a little on my way home, but it was only just starting to get cold. I was a little surprised to see that the door to the house was locked, and the lights were out. Denise hadn't made it home yet. I shook off the rain and started to make dinner. She must have come home then left again to run errands. Before I had finished heating up some water for soup, Denise came home.
“Hi, honey,” I said “I'm glad you're home, I was just about to make some soup. “
“Sounds good, “ she said as she closed the door behind her, “I'm starvina marvina.” What can I say , we were silly newlyweds.
Where is Boaz?
I was suddenly struck with how strange it was that Denise had just closed the door behind her like that. “Don't you have Boaz with you?”
“No,” she said a little exasperated, “I'm just getting home from work”.
“Oh no! He's still outside! “ I hurried over to the back door, expecting to see our little black, white and gray dog shivering in his dog house, mad at me for not letting him in when I got home.
He was in the backyard alright, laying down as if he were huddled to the ground for warmth. “Boaz! Boaz!” I called several times, louder and louder as I realized he was not moving, not stirring at all.
“Oh no! Boaz!”
In a second, Denise was beside me, calling our little puppy as if he were far away, not hearing, even though he was now in my hands, and she beside me. We called his name, just his name for several minutes. I picked him up, he was stiff, and light in my hands, his fur just barely wet, and beginning to mat under my hands.
I brought him into the house, but there was no sign of life. Our little puppy was dead.
Denise wept and wept. We held him in our arms, and prayed, and wept. I looked for any sign that he'd been hurt, no blood, nothing else to indicate that he had done anything other than just lay down and die.
We sat in our cute little house, the back door open, wind and rain blowing in through the screen. Boaz lay on the kitchen floor, his wet fur dripping just a little. Denise in tears, and I could only hold her in my arms, and try to think.
A little later, I found a box that once held cowboy boots, to hold the body of our little dog. We'd bury him somewhere. As I knelt down to pick up Boaz' body, I looked up to watch Denise a moment. We had to leave, the family was expecting us, so she was getting ready. Right then,
this image will always be in my mind) she was vacuuming our living room, sobbing as she moved the vacuum cleaner back and forth, almost rocking. The sound of the vacuum added a mournful wail to her sobs.
Good Friday
Even though Boaz was 'just a dog', that was a day of very sad loss to Denise and me. That day was Good Friday. And for the first time, I related to the loss
in our own strangely analogous way) of Christ's disciples as they saw his lifeless body. Prayed and wept, knowing that death is real and hateful and painful. For Denise and I was really the first time we had lost something we loved to death. How much more profound would it be to see a man that you loved and had so much hope in die. Even as you watched hope die.
Easter has been different for me ever since, because of that afternoon. I relate to Peter, who did the wrong things at the wrong times. I should have come home earlier, I should have kept him safe, I should have not been gone at some critical time... should have, should have. To know real forgiveness for the “should haves” from the one you should not have injured.. that is real peace.
Boaz was a dog, and certainly no saviour. But the connection inside of us is still something of love, isn't it? And lost love is the pain of a sinful world that we live in, a world with death happening all too often, and we can do nothing now to stop it. The feelings and the thoughts of that weekend were useful to me to find within myself the connection to reality of the moment of the cross, and in my own way, the joy of the resurrection.
Lesson Learned
But, there is one other lesson that I learned, and that takes me back to your words, Eric. I realized that I could actually become the sort of person that is so involved in the puzzle of what they are doing as to lose track of time and reality. The time I spent in that lab wasn't consciously ignoring my friend Boaz, or trying to hurt my wife by neglecting to take care of our puppy. The time went by for me so very quickly, I was immersed.
Every day, I met and worked with these technical people, immersed in their code, in their applications, in being developers. So much so that some of them had forgotten to have a life
heck some of them would forget to eat!).
A Life Choice
I've decided that my calling as a man is to immerse myself more in the lives of my wife and children than in other things. Sort of like an alcoholic, I will simply stay away from what would suck me into it so much that I am less 'me', or less able to be what I really want to be. I'm not perfect at that, I take a little “nip o' the programming” now and then. But in choosing what I'll do for a living, I don't want to forget the rest of life while I work.
Peace,
Lloyd