Love your pets
We never know how long we will have them?
These two I cherish their memory.

Certificate of Cremation

 Remember Forest Gump and the feather that came floating down while he was sitting on the bench after his precious son made his cute introduction to the lady bus driver.

Please cut that frame and freeze the pose for quite some time. For what follows will touch your heart:

Today, February the first is a big beautiful surprise. Even while we slept the most gorgeous snow flakes we have ever seen began. It’s still spreading Mother Natures quilt over the landscape. From the east we are wrapped with

some of the oldest snow capped mountains in the world. Estatoa Falls cascades down over the boulders into the pools below to meander and trickle slowly for a mile or so to the Little Tennessee River. This stream looks like it heads backwards north which has always puzzled me?

Thinking of the past I gazed in the mountains at a number of homes which follow the peaks that provide landscapes for homes in a resort called Sky Valley. For ten years this was the happy residence of our little Peekapoo, Bumpy Beal.  She loved the golf cart, the bass boat and lived two years on our house boat. Every day we opened our Merry Christmas shop in this valley we now reside, “the mighty Bump” would help us greet the customers.

While typing this memory, I am looking at the

flakes gathering to fall through the mountain pass while waiting for my best friend Starter to return

and bite the snow balls I toss at him. Starter Beal doesn’t have but one eye, so he misses the balls that pass his left eye and sometimes bust on his furry, beautiful face.

Starter seems to pause, while we stroll our foot prints through the snow. At times I look back to be aware of where our paths have crossed when he happily sprung in front of me. We stopped to observe the highway where cars normally would come down from where Bumpy spent her residence and the ending of her sixteen years. I pondered over all the years she passed in front of Starter’s home, but Starter didn’t have the pleasure of a falling snow ‘til 2007.                                            

 In the year 1995, Bumpy was getting on up in age and looking for her happy hunting ground. We definitely were not in favor of that idea but the time for a decision did arrive. It was December 30, 1995 when this wonderful very dear to our hearts friend began to fade away to almost close the curtains.

OOOOOOh Weeeee, what a tough decision when she was lying on the Vet’s table looking up with her little black beadie eyes. I’m sure she figured this was it? We all had teary eyes and we made up our minds this was not the end of her journey.

I picked that baby up in my arms and took her back up the mountain. Yes m’am, the snow on this day gathered about chest deep on Bumpy Beal and each time for a trip outside I would let her stagger down the trail ‘til the job was done.

She loved her mama’s meat loaf and that was her last meal. It was time for Bumpy to go to sleep. She was mesmerized by the sparkling ashes in the mountain rock fireplace. Her trip to her L. L. Bean mattress with her favorite quilt was her last comfort. We hovered over her sharing all the love we could muster up. Our tear drops were streaming over her down our cheeks and falling on

her sweet, beautiful face.

We saw her take the last breath while gazing up at us and this is when it happens…………

The air from the heating vent on the wall came on, and both of us stared at the ceiling where a magnificent, down soft feather came floating over our heads and on to Bumpy’s resting place.

Having walked around the home of the Mighty Starter Beal, tossing snow balls and enjoying the fact that for awhile this specimen of one of God’s creatures did have his vision restored in the only eye available to have the surgeon remove a cataract. For nine months he was totally blind.

Now his eyes are open, the one cataract is a monument of the past.

May God bless the cherished lives and friendship of our loyal pets.

Certificate of Cremation

This is to certify that Bumpy Beal

was cremated at Mountain Kingdom Pet Crematory.     December 30, 1995

Farewell, Master, yet not farewell.

Where I go, ye too shall dwell.

I am gone, before your face.

A moments time, a little space.

When ye come to where I have stepped.

Ye will wonder why we wept.

Everett Beal Rph.

author of Fatal Addiction

Southern Winds