our handsome sweet and stalwart Fala died on February 2, 1997, shortly before 4:00AM in the morning. When he died, his sister Kate wept as only a dog can; her howl was her farewell, and with that she woke us to tell us what had happened, to express her grief and to let the pack know that a terrible event had transpired. After Fala died Kate searched for him in the great field, where she had seen him the day previous to his death. She looked back to where we had gotten out of the car and then systematically crossed the field, marking it so that Fala could find his way home or at least to alert him to her presence. She used a rectangular schema, walking around the field's perimeter and then dividing it into smaller rectangles. Never did she forget him in the almost two more years that she survived him. Though not a blood sibling, indeed she was about one year older, they bonded and cared for one another and played joyfully together. Her loss was ours as well. I drew him the night before he died, a task that was so difficult to do; a body bloated with cancers that discomforted him enormously. Had we but known then what we know now, his suffering would have been brief. But nonetheless we were all so attached to him, with Wiggy, as we also called him, that we held onto him until death seized him in the early morning. We honor and remember him on this day, the day he was cremated.
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