Nancy Tofflemire

May 18/53 - Feb 22/08

Sara

Brewer

The continuing memory of my friend,

Nancy Tofflemire

During the summer of 2007 – unfortunately the only summer I knew my friend – we would sit in her backyard and talk, she with her red wine and I with a beer.  With us were always her two pets: Sara, a 12-year-old female Rotty and Brewer, a 15-year-old Husky.

We’d sit and talk for hours some nights, about this, about that, with Sara laying on one person’s foot and Brewer on the other.  They were both old dogs with all the problems associated with their age.  I never thought anything of it at the time, but I remember one night, as we watched Brewer’s arthritis-infested back legs hobble up the back stairs, that she turned to me expressing concern about what would happen to the two dogs should something ever

happen to her.  I assured her at the time that they would always have a place to live, as I remembered ma’s well-treed, doggy-friendly back yard.  My family has taken in homeless pets for as far back as I can remember.  There was Rusty, the hairless, 2-week old pup, found in a paper bag at the side of the road that lived to the age of 15.  Then there was Scruffy, the long-haired, gray cat that crawled out from under an unused car in the driveway one year in February, starving, with half its tail gone from freezing.  Scruffy lived to the ripe old age of 16.  So on April 8th, after a few weeks of building and preparation, and about a month after my friends passing, Sara & Brewer made their trip to their new home – ma’s backyard.

The music, by the way, is by Yanni and is called “A Word in Private” and, I suppose is a fitting background for those times we talked last summer in her backyard and the way that the person she was continues to touch people’s lives today.

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Their new backyard and rather large doghouse.

Contentment under the trees by the picnic table.

Sara and Brewer -- May 6, 2008

And the always, ever-watchful, red-tailed hawk ... sitting ... looking ...