In Memory of Sam

I just had an email exchange with an old boyfriend, who reminded me of a story from my life he particularly loved: The story of “Sam and the Coffee-Can stilts”. I will tell it here. It is a story of heartbreak, pathos, and unconditional love.

Sam was my grandmother Mummy Gina’s sheepdog. Sam’s white hair fell over her eyes. Sam was a member of our family. But her allegiance was to one person, and one person only: my grandmother.

Oh, did that dog love my grandmother.

It still cracks my heart to think of it. (Sam is long dead. She got very old, she lost her sight – one time, when she was at our house, she got stuck in a corner – a corner in the kitchen where there was a Lazy Susan – and Sam kept pressing her head against the corner, stuck … unable to get out … until one of us noticed her plight and rescued her.)

My grandmother would go off on trips, to visit my aunt, or to travel with her friends, and would drop Sam off at our house.

Before she departed, Mummy Gina would lean down and say right into Sam’s peaceful white furry face, “Sam: I’m going to church. I’ll be right back.”

Sam knew what that meant: “I only have to bear the unbearable separation for an hour.”

And then, of course, Mummy Gina would be gone for two weeks, which must have felt like FOREVER to Sam. Sam never got her bearings at our house. Getting stuck in the corner is only one example. She never stopped missing Mummy Gina, and mourning the loss of Mummy Gina.

Me and my siblings were kids at this time.

We had made coffee-can stilts – do kids still make those? Pierce holes in the corners of coffee cans, put strings through those holes … and then put your feet on the upturned coffee can, holding onto the strings, so that you can then stagger about, on “stilts”.

Well, the O’Malley children were VERY into coffee-can stilts. Pairs of them were lying about the house, like carnage on a battlefield.

One night, the family was woken up by a terrible metallic crash.

Now this story has a tragic element, so be warned:

My father responded to the crash, and found Sam, lying at the bottom of the cellar steps, her feet stuck in the coffee cans.

She obviously, in her blind wanderings through the house, searching hopelessly for Mummy Gina, got her feet caught in the coffee cans … and staggered around … stuck … until she finally fell down the stairs, crash … crash … crash.

Poor little thing! All the love we gave her did not make up for the loss of the Mummy Gina love. And, actually, knowing Mummy Gina, and having been loved by Mummy Gina – I don’t blame Sam!

One rainy night, Sam escaped from our house … and went on an adventurous trek to find my grandmother, who was, at that moment, sipping a cocktail on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, or something like that. Sam disappeared. The rain poured down.

It was like that movie – what was it called? – where the dogs travel 800 miles to get themselves home. “The Incredible Journey” or something like that? I read the book when I was a kid, MERELY because the author’s first name was Sheila too. Yes. Egotist, thy name is Sheila Kathleen.

Anyway. Sam could no longer stand it in this confusing world of Lazy Susans, and corners which surrounded you, and coffee-can-stilts which would not leave you alone, and 4 little kids who occasionally try to ride you like a pony … and she flew the coop.

The ASPCA (or somebody – Dad: was it a neighbor? Or someone who took Sam in?) contacted us, telling us that they found a mud-soaked half-blind dog – 5 miles away from our house … wandering around … as though she knew where she was going.

Poor little wee dog. She loved my grandmother so much.

But damn. I still laugh (with pity and horror) at the thought of Sam, white furry-eyed Sam, crumpled up in the O’Malley children’s coffee-can stilts, completely bewildered at what her life had become.