Hope on Four Legs

My mother had Hope.  

She didn’t plan on being widowed at age fifty with meager financial resources, fragile health, and no work history outside of the home. Not one to whine or play the victim, Mom carved out a life working part-time at my brother’s golf course, doting on her grandchildren, keeping her small condo and yard prim and proper, and attending the 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning service at her church.

All that gave her hope.  A reason to live.   

Then she slipped on a patch of ice while walking down to the mailbox, hit her head on the asphalt, and knocked herself unconscious.  After she came to, she crawled back to the house in the sub-zero temperature, lucky to be alive.  But her health was never the same.  My sister, a nurse, tended her physical ailments.  I tried to lighten her intermittent bouts of depression long distance by phone. My brother stopped by regularly to address upkeep and maintenance issues. 

But then my mother found Hope. 

With a brightness in her voice that we had not heard for a long time, Mom called to tell us that she had adopted an English bulldog.  Now, my mother’s history with English bulldogs was not good.  She always had a soft spot for the slobbering, smashed-faced, pot-bellied, bow-legged critters, but Herman and Chauncey, her first bulldogs, did not return the favor of her affection.  Herman was just plain mean.  I steered clear of him as a child.  Chauncey was a medical nightmare and a bully, too, incessantly nipping at my then three-year-old son’s heels when he went to visit his grandmother.  Needless to say, my siblings and I were not enthusiastic about our aging mother’s itch to adopt another drooling menace.

But she did.  She adopted a four-year-old English bulldog named Hope from an agency in Indianapolis that finds “forever homes” for abandoned bulldogs. Hope was kept in a cage at a breeding farm for the first years of her life churning out litter after litter of pedigree pups that returned a tidy profit to her owners at the cost of Hope’s health. Among numerous other ailments, her hind legs were severely crippled as a result of her cramped quarters. Done with her breeding years, the breeding factory was done with her. Enter the Rescue-a-Bulldog folks who took her in and then gave Hope to my mother. 

Hope was as sweet and well mannered as her predecessors were not.  She adored my mother.  Would not leave her side.  Limped along bow-legged behind her wherever she went.  Loved kids.  Was ugly as can be— had a face only my mother could love.  But we all loved Hope, for after three decades of living alone, my mother had a companion.  A new lease on life.  She had Hope. 

Hope’s presence had such an uplifting effect on Mom that her depression lifted and she decided to begin a new chapter in her life. My niece had given birth to a baby boy. So, Mom decided she would sell her condo and she and Hope would move an hour and a half south to where my sister and niece lived, rent a house, and do their part to help raise her great-grandson. 

My aunt, Mom’s older sister, was up in arms.

“She’s seventy-seven years old and she’s moving somewhere she’s never lived before? Selling everything and starting over?  What’s gotten into her?  Is she crazy?  Do something! Talk some sense into your mother.”

“Naw,” I said. “I’m letting her go. I’m encouraging her, as a matter of fact.  For one thing, she’s about the age Abraham and Sarah were when they left their long-time home to go a place the Lord would show them sight unseen. And for another thing, she has Hope.”

So she moved. And with Hope, she had four more good years.  I can see in my mind’s eye Mom taking Hope for a “walk” which consisted of a block or so of the bow-legged beauty hopping a few inches at a time on her gimpy legs, first the right and then the left.  If any of the neighborhood kids or the mailman happened to be out, the “walk” would be interrupted by their coming over and fawning over Hope, whom they knew by name and showered with affection. Then, exhausted by the effort and home again, she’d gulp water from her bowl, most of which would end up in a syrupy puddle of drool on the linoleum kitchen floor.  With that, she’d amble into the living room and using a nifty set of steps my brother built, she somehow climbed them to the couch where she’d lie down next to Mom and fall fast asleep, noisily snoring for the next hour or two. 

For the last weeks of her life, Mom lived with my sister and her husband.  When Hospice was called, they brought a bed and set it up in the living room.  And next to the bed was placed the set of stairs that Hope could ascend so as to lie next to my mother. 

Mom’s other constant companion in those final weeks was her four-year-old great-grandson, Elijah. It was not lost on me that Mom’s dearest companions in her final days were a boy whose name means “The Lord is God” and a dog named Hope. If you have The Lord is God and Hope cuddling up to you all day every day, you know you’re Beloved. 

The afternoon she died with Hope at her side, my sister and I went to Mom’s house on a mission.  We knew she had stayed in touch with a woman at the bulldog rescue organization over the years, doting on Hope and thanking her over and over for the four-legged gift that blessed her last years of life. We had been told by Mom that if she outlived Hope, we were to call the woman who had delivered Hope to her. She had assured Mom that if she could no longer care for Hope, she would personally make sure someone else cared for the dog as lovingly as Mom had. 

In the top drawer of Mom’s desk, we found a sheet of paper on which was typed the name and phone number of the woman from the rescue agency. When she answered the phone, I told her that Mom had died and we were honoring her request that we phone her so that Hope would be properly cared for the final years of her life. 

“Hope and your mother have a special place in my heart because of what they meant to each other,” she said. “I will adopt Hope myself.  My home can be Hope’s new forever home. Let’s work out how you can get her to me.”

Mom died in central Illinois. We remembered her picking up Hope somewhere outside Indianapolis.  Jennie and I live in Lexington, KY.   

“Where do you live?” I asked. “Indianapolis?  It doesn’t matter. I’ll drive her to wherever you live.”

“My home,” she replied, “is in Lexington, Kentucky.”            

And so it was that Mom and Hope, who by God’s providence had blessed each other with grace beyond measure, were both received into their forever homes.