Love Notes

by Bill Love

Murray Love was my father. He was a Presbyterian minister, who grew up on a farm, the youngest boy of the family. He was the errand boy for his brothers while they were working in the fields. His brothers called him Fetch. Because his running errands in the fields reminded his sister so much of Joseph and his brothers, she called him Joe. His brothers were Coot (Boyce), Fat (Erskine), and Doc (Reid). His given name was Murray.

Murray

Murray is my dog. His father was a chocolate lab; his mother, a black lab/Chesapeake Bay Retriever mix. I may not have appreciated the full import of giving my dog the same name as my father because I never called my father Murray. I always called him Daddy.

When I got Murray, people asked me what kind of hunting I was going to do with him. I am not a hunter, so I said all he has to do is wag his tail when I get home. It’s one of his best things (along with drooling and shedding).

When he was a puppy, I took him with me in the car. I took him out when he had to go and fed him. I became his pack. He would bound up to me when I came home, jumping up and down, wagging his tail. The way one person explained it to me was, “You are his reward.”

Shortly after I moved to Michigan, I was going out of town for a week for continuing education. I asked a neighbor, who had a beagle and a black lab, if she could keep him while I was gone. She said to bring him down to see if he got along with Buster and Max. I thought, Murray has to go on an interview. The three dogs immediately formed a pack. “I think this will work,” she said. “Where does he sleep at your house?” I said, “He sleeps on the bed with me.” She said, “A dog is not getting in my bed.” I said, “That’s fine, but that wasn’t the question. The question was where he sleeps at my house. At my house, he sleeps in the bed with me. At your house, he can sleep wherever you want him to.” When I got back, she had brought him home, so he greeted me at the door. I saw a note on the kitchen counter that began: “Murray slept with me.” Murray’s a charmer. And Buster and Max were then allowed on the bed, too.

It was in Michigan that Murray began to go to work with me. He greeted everyone who came in. Once, when I was praying with a brother and two sisters whose mother had died, he entered the circle and began to lick one of the sisters, and it was the one who would be most comforted by that. He enjoyed Bible school and was happy to be petted by the children and lick their faces.

In my next interim, we were separated for a little over two and a half weeks. I had bypass surgery. On the second Sunday I was out of the hospital, I went to see him. It took two people to hold him down. I sat there and bawled. When I left, he went to the door and looked out for me and cried.

Eight weeks after my heart surgery, I was told that I had cancer. My first thought was that it wasn’t fair, that the Love men die of heart attacks. My second thought was that they fixed my heart so that I could enjoy the full experience of dying slowly of cancer. My third thought was to question what I did to deserve it and realized, whether I deserved it or not, I had it and needed to deal with it. The fourth and the saddest was that I would die before Murray, leaving him all alone and wondering what would happen to him. I determined to take care of myself and my health so that I would live as long as possible. This cancer has a 99% longterm survival rate, and I’m cancer free. Even at those odds, you still don’t want to hear your name and cancer in the same sentence, and if you do, another word you want in the sentence is “survivor.” I was talking with someone recently about those challenges to my health. The person said, “You had to go through that alone.” No, I didn’t. I have Murray.

In California, when I was again away for continuing education, I asked a member of the church who was blind and had had a guide dog to keep him. I knew she knew how important a dog is. She said he immediately knew the difference between her and her sighted roommate and responded differently to each.

When I returned, as with every time I have been gone for however long, he greeted me excitedly. Even at eight years old, he still greets me as he did when he was a puppy. I don’t know how he perceives time, but it seems almost as if I were gone forever and am back again alive and well. It has occurred to me that he experiences something of Easter (I was dead and now am alive), and I wonder how we can be so blasé about such good news.

He and I have our routines. He communicates his wants and needs to me. He reads my body language and comforts me, plays with me, sits with me. He is a living example of loyalty, devotion, and faithfulness. I am a better person for having him in my life.

Murray bears his name well. And I think Daddy would be pleased and maybe a little chagrined.