Happy Birthday to My Hero, Love Kat

The Gulick family was given a dog name Ruth when Tim and I were still very small. Ruth became part of our extended family and listened to all our sorrows. She would wake with us early Saturday mornings to watch our favorite cartoons from a blanket fort.

Ruth endured being captured by a green knit blanket that our grandma Keating had made because Ruth knew that it made us happy and she was a dog ready and desirous to please. We loved Ruth dearly and Ruth, I fancied loved me the most because I loved her more than anyone else in the family. Tim claimed that Ruth was his dog, but Ruth and I knew better.Ruth had made it through many close calls of being given away or sent to the "farm", but had always been a survivor when it came to remaining a Gulick. But as with all luck, it ran out, and the fateful day that I had been dreading came; Ruth was being given to a family with a real farm.I could not bring myself to actually go to the new family's home and drive away from her like some bad scene from Born Free. So Tim and Mom took her while I wept at home by myself.

When they returned, the nails had been driven and Ruth was officially gone. Tim told me all that had happened, and I could not be consoled. I cried so hard that I began to have side cramps that caused me great pain. Tim with his God-given compassion and desire to heal the broken-hearted, created for me a foam companion made from recently-arrived packaging that he wrapped around my heaving ribs and tied with various strings and fasteners. As the psychology of medicine would have it, I began to fancy that it was working, and I was hurting just a little bit less.

Had it not been for my big brother Tim, I might have died from a broken heart and split ribs.

Thank you Tim for giving me back my life!

Kathleen Gulick Haase