His birthday is tomorrow. He’ll be 22. Million. Like the stars. No need to count. The years mean little for a Buddha like Scooby. He just is.

I wanted to write many things today. I tried, I really did. I sat down over and over but words would not come. I didn’t think I would cry but I did. To my tears, thank you for being here. You are my friends.

It may not make sense but it may or maybe a little of both. That’s ok. I miss him. I read through some of the things I’d written about him these past few years. I was sad to find I had forgotten so many. I was glad to remember.

The girl who proposed to him. When he saved the lives of a box of kittens. All of the homeless folks he befriended because he was one of them too. The day he met Dutch the truck driver’s dog and told him everything would be ok. The little tiny boy with no hair from his chemo who laughed so hard when Scooby licked his bald head. His Mom cried as she watched her son laugh because she worried he had forgotten how.

The woman in the park he ran to, she was crying from the hard hands of her boyfriend and Scooby rushed straight to her and sat down next to her on the lawn and let her cry into his velvet ears. How did he know? Of course he knew. He took the hurt from her, he absorbed it for her. She told him that.

And just last year The Mayoral Proclamation issued so the entire City of Portland could celebrate Scooby’s 21st Birthday.

Who knew it would be his last birthday on this earth, at least this time around? He did. Of course he did. But he never told me. It wouldn’t have mattered. That’s ok. Scooby knew what he was doing.

I write this now at 9:00pm on August 30th, 2016. These words move from my heart to my fingers to this keyboard fast as I can type. There will be no proofread. The sentence fragments run together and the words collide. I know that. But they do so with love, from my heart.

For each of these words are Scooby.

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” – The Little Prince

Happy Birthday, Scoobs. I love you 🙂

–Larry Chusid August 30, 2016

Sit. Stay. Eat. Live. thepongofund.org

In Memory of 150 year-old Scooby Chusid:
August 31, 1994 – February 14, 2016
Always Loved, Always Remembered.

(Photo Credit Pauline Zonneveld Photography. Thank you Pauline.)