This past Valentine’s Day was full of surprises. I expected the day to be a quiet one spent at home with my wife as she recovers from knee surgery. Instead, it all changed at the crack of dawn. It started with a message we were dreading. “I’m sorry, I thought I sent the message yesterday but I guess not. We are putting Captain down today at home … might one of you be able to take Delilah across the street to the park for a little bit while it happens…” Signed L. This is not how we I was expecting on Valentine’s Day. I hate confronting death.
I am not well equipped to deal with death. I shut my emotions down. I refuse to cry. Maybe this is rooted in my childhood where tears were a sign of weakness or from my desire to keep going and finishing the mission during my time in the United States Navy. Regardless, death is not something I look forward to. Much less the death of loved one. Believe me when I say I loved Captain.
Captain. A fearless pup. I am a writer. I use words to capture the unimaginable and give it corporeal form. Yet I doubt anything I write here today will come close to describing Captain. I won’t bother with sweet platitudes nor flowery language. Instead, I will tell you two stories about Captain.
My friend L. is also an Afghanistan war veteran. I always thought it fitting L chose Captain as her companion, or rather, Captain knew L needed her upon her return from war.
The first story is about trust and love. I met Captain around six years ago his eyesight was nearly gone. He suffered from general progressive atrophy. He was around eight and half years old. But a simple blindness will never be enough to slow down Captain. I remember the first time Captain joined my wife and I on a hike with our friend L and her husband M to Mitchell Lake.
Mitchell Lake sits at approximately 10,500 feet above sea level. The hike to reach Mitchell Lake is approximately two miles from the parking lot. What I remember most is Captain leading the charge uphill, down a boulder, conquering all four miles into Mitchell Lake!
How could a blind dog lead a pack? I don’t think the answer really matters. Captain simply led. If Captain tripped in a jump between boulders, he didn’t let it slow him down. He lived life the way I aspire to live life. A giant boulder to a blind dog became an exercise in nonstop sniffing and examination, a patient exploration of the world around him. Upon arrival to Mitchell Lake Captain jumped into the lake. A lake which drains into a fast-moving river syphoning water, logs, and earth from Mitchell Lake.
“L is Captain ok, he’s swimming pretty far out” I asked
L smiled. Pride radiating from ear to ear “He’s ok, he knows what he is doing!” Yes, he did. I feared for life. I had barely met Captain a few precious hours earlier, I already loved him. But the love between dog and their chosen human is a special bond. I understand all too well and Captain and L were a match made in dog-heaven.
My wife likes to say my dogs choose their humans. Luca understood my bloodstain soul as it was recovering from years in the service of the country. He sniffed, pain love and suffering and gave me compassion. I like to think Captain chose L.
I can always count on Luca to awaken me from my worst nightmares, to help me navigate crowds, to face the world. Every time I saw Captain and L, I saw Luca’s love in his eyes, Captain guiding his human, Captain the fearless, the loving fluff guiding our pack as we made our way to through life.
The last story is about letting go. The last time I saw Captain was a few minutes before his death. I had known he was sick for the past year. My wife and I were always dreading a message from L stating that he had passed in his sleep. No, honestly, I wanted to hear that Captain had passed in his sleep. I did not want to witness his death. I have been to more funerals than most people, all of them fellow servicemember who died at the hands of military service, either in the line of duty, or perhaps because they came home alive after seeing and dealing so much in death.
We arrived a few minutes before the vet did. L and her partner M met us at the door. He cried freely in my shoulder. I felt his pain. Tears flowing freely. I felt the soft sounds of his heart as he mourned the impeding passing of his loving friend.
Sometime in 2008 I had the distinct honor of presenting a flag to a mourning mother. Her son was laid to rest at the South Florida National Cemetery. I guessed she wasn’t much older than my mother at the time. Her son’s funeral has always remained with me.
I remember reciting the following words while kneeling on one knee “On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Navy and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.” The grieving mother held my hand long after I recited our thanks. I didn’t dare make any movements to disentangle myself from her embrace. I felt like a thieve returning a small trinket when I had taken a throve of gold. A feeling I will carry with me for the rest of my life and a moment I hate reliving. M embraced me with the same intensity as the grieving mother. In that moment, I wanted to run away. Still, I held M much the same I had held the grieving mother so many years ago.
When we walked into L and M house that afternoon everyone, but Captain greeted us. Things in this world you can always count on are the sun rising in the east, water is wet and Captain greeting friends and family by the door. When he finally came to drink some water before the vet’s arrival he peed on the floor. I knew had to go, I knew he was in pain, but if I touched, his pain would be real and I would have to say goodbye.
A few minutes after our arrival the Vet arrived. We took the Delilah for a walk. My wife in her brace and I walked Delilah to the park. Delilah was pulling me. She is eleven years old. I have known her since was six and not once I had felt her pull me during a walk. A few minutes earlier she had been limping, but during this walk she led, the pulled, I couldn’t recognize her. I kept trying to bring her back to the house, but she kept sniffing the world around her, the air, the changing wind.
We decided to listen to Delilah. She was mapping the changing winds with her nose. Who are we to question the wisdom of the world afterall?
On that Valentine’s Day as we were walking Delilah, we weren’t home exchanging gifts, nor at a fancy restaurant preparing for an outrageously priced meal. Delilah was walking us, charting the way, taking on unexpected turns, cherishing the moment.
Finally, we managed to convince her to start walking home. Upon our arrival Captain had already passed peacefully. Captain’s body and head were curled on L’s lap. My wife held both L and M and all three of them gently cried. Still, I refused to let my tears flow. The vet sweetly took impressions of his nose, his paws and a lock of hair. After a time, she gently and lovingly placed him on a basket. Delilah sniffed and laid by her brother’s side one last time. Time stood still. I finally brought myself to touch Captain. My tears were about to snap. Still, I held them in check.
Sometime after 5:00 p.m. Captain left his home one last time. L and M once again apologized for “ruining Valentine’s Day.” Honestly, we thank them for letting us spend a few more minutes with Captain, to be part of his passing. I then piped up “Man Delilah was pulling me, she kept wanting to go to the end of the street and the next block over!” immediately L smiled and said “really, she always wants to walk easy, you can usually sit on the bench with her!” and my wife replied “ I know, but today was different, it was like she could sense Captain in the air.” Another round of hugs ensued, but this time I hugged my wife. I told her that I wanted to cry, but I didn’t know how to mourn the death of a loved one. She said “honey, its ok to cry, just let it go.” I cried at last.
Next thing I know we had ordered authentic Indian cuisine. While we were ordering food L and I both mentioned how we couldn’t eat Indian food after deployment to Afghanistan. But independently we had relearned to associate curry with good memories. L through a sweet neighbor that always made mean butter chicken, and myself at the Little Lama café Naropa University, where I had obtained my MFA. This conversation then found us all sitting around the table. L remarked how Captain how survived a car incident, M recollected the number of times he tripped going up and down the stairs, my wife and I recollected how he ran into a pole after his sister who was guiding him, became more interested in a rabbit hole, and at the end of each story, we kept saying how he would just get up and go. The last story we recalled was when he felled down a man hole, barely yelped, and someone yoked that he was like a cat, and that turned to when life gives you shit stand up and yell “Ahhh….I’m Captain.”
Enrique Gautier is a BIPOC veteran, poet, educator, photographer, and community advocate whose work bridges the worlds of justice, storytelling, and healing. A Navy veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom, he now serves as full-time English faculty at Red Rocks Community College and teaches cultural competency at the college’s Law Enforcement Academy. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University, a JD, and a BS in Biology, and was selected for the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Poetry Collective. His debut poetry collection—praised for its formal innovation—is currently under national award consideration. Gautier’s work has appeared in Bombay Gin, The War Horse, The Warrior Poet, and Veterans Life Magazine, with recent exhibitions at the Colorado Photography Art Center and Aurora City Hall. Enrique is the recipient of this year’s Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop Lit Fest Veteran fellowship, with judge Benjamin Hertwig praising his “formal dexterity and linguistic vigor” that “harnesses a controlled momentum that forces the reader to sit still and reckon with the irreconcilable.” He serves as Senior Vice Commander of VFW Post 1, where he leads trauma-informed writing workshops for veterans, and was recently named the inaugural judge for Poppy Press’ chapbook competition for veteran poets. His teaching is rooted in “informed care pedagogy,” centering equity, lived experience, and creative expression.