Dear Chap: A Love Letter to a Little Dog Named Charlie Chaplin

By Andie Michael

What do you do when your best friend dies; that is, if your best friend was a dog and you'd lived alone together, leaving no one with whom to reminisce?  You write.  Andie Michael decided to do just that.  She poured her feelings into what would become a letter to her dog, Chap – memorializing his sweet, adorable personality and every experience that she didn't want to let fade into time – and thanking him for giving her life meaning at times when it seemed to have none.  That letter grew into Dear Chap:  A Love Letter To a Little Dog Named Charlie Chaplin.

With its heartfelt message and the simple, intimate voice in which it's written, Dear Chap speaks directly to the two-thirds of Americans who are pet owners, on behalf of the millions for whom pets have become family members, and especially to those whose pets are or have been their best friends.  You are not alone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andie Michael
• Release date: Jul 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732516403

Book preview

DEAR CHAP

A Love Letter To

A Little Dog Named Charlie Chaplin

Andie Michael

Copyright © 1999 Registration Number TXu 720-045

Copyright © 2018 Andie Michael

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

ISBN 978-1-7325164-0-3

Front cover drawing by Jessie Homer French

Cover design by Jennifer Newcomb Marine

First Edition

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Michael, Andie

Dear Chap:  A Love Letter to a Little Dog Named Charlie Chaplin

ISBN 978-1-7325164-0-3

Contact Andie Michael Unlimited

[e-mail]

IN THE INTEREST OF

preserving the privacy

of people who played

a significant role

in my life

but

had no idea they might end up

in a book someday

I have chosen to change

some first names

and eliminate

most last names

Minnie:Users:anndouglas:Pictures:iPhoto Library:Originals:2018:Jul 2, 2018:01_under blanket-2.tif

Dedicated to

Joanie & Dede

and

everyone who has ever had

an animal as a best friend

Table of Contents

A Note to the Reader

Preface

Love At First Sight

A Fear of Forever

Out of the Closet

My Little New Yorker

Through Good Times and Bad

How Did You Do That?

What’s Wrong?!!

Enter Two Angels

A Kitten ... and a Puppy Again

The Veteran

To Everything There is a Season

Thank You, Chap

After Words

In Gratitude

In Memoriam

And in loving memory of

Appendix

Books You Might Find Helpful

A Note to the Reader

THIS LITTLE BOOK BEGAN as a conversation I longed to have.  After 15 1/2 years together, my best friend had passed on and I missed him terribly.  I longed to talk about him, to reminisce about our years together, smile at the fun times and come to terms with the sad times.  There was only one problem.  Because we had lived alone together for most of those years, there was no one to have that conversation with—no one who shared all of the experiences we’d had and who knew all of those little things that made him so special. 

He was the one who was there with me for my greatest joys and biggest challenges.  He was the one who shared my meals, factored into every plan, and curled up beside me every night.  He made me laugh, sometimes in spite of myself, and gave my life a sense of purpose during those times when it seemed to have none.  Most of all, he helped me learn two of the most important lessons of my life:  that I could have a committed relationship - and how to love unconditionally.

I don’t mean to say that my friends weren’t sympathetic when he died.  They really were.  They were as understanding and supportive as they could be.  But let’s face it.  When you lose someone you love so much, who was such an integral part of your life, there is not much anyone can do to help.  Only time and tears can heal that kind of wound.

And there were those who considered him to be just a dog.  To me, he was the best friend I ever had.

So I started writing a letter to him to put down on paper everything I could remember about his puppyhood, his personality, all of his special characteristics and the experiences we shared over the years—details that I didn’t want to let fade into time.  I wanted to preserve what had been and would not be again, so that I would never forget.  And I wanted to pay homage to a very special spirit.

I had begun to write it, and then I put it away for awhile.  It was too painful; too difficult to call into memory so soon.  Then, a friend lost her best friend—a cat named Bo—and talked to me about her pain.  I shared some books on the subject with her, and she found more on her own.  These books offered anecdotes of other people’s experiences and solace for those of us who wonder if we’ve lost our mind to grieve so heavily for a lost pet.

When a human we love dies, society rallies around. They understand.  They’ve been there.  They know what we’re going through or, if not, they can imagine it because they know that we’re experiencing something that lies in the road ahead for them.  Employers give their employees time off to regroup.  Flowers and condolences are sent.  Funerals are performed.  There is validation of that grief.  But when a beloved pet dies, life is expected to go on without missing a beat.

What’s the matter with you? we hear.  It was just a dog.

Aren’t you over that yet?

No.  We aren’t.  It takes time.  Not days, but weeks, months and maybe even years of coming home to an empty house or apartment, unconsciously expecting to hear the jingle of a collar or the meowed hello coming to greet us.  It is a loneliness rivaled only by the loss of a spouse or a child.  Our world has been left in an empty silence and it hurts.

I listened to my friend, and I cried with her.  And then I decided to finish my letter and make it a book.  I needed to, first of all, for myself.  I wanted those memories to stay fresh in my mind, or at least be accessible to me when I want them.  And not only that.

By sharing my story, I hope to provide others—my fellow animal lovers for whom a pet is a best friend—with a safe place.  A place where you will know that you are understood ... that you are not alone ... that you are not weird or crazy ...

And that it’s okay to grieve.

Preface

IT WAS 1982.  I WAS 35 years old, living in my hometown of Studio City, California and working as personal assistant to a film and television producer. 

Phil had offered me the job in 1978, four years earlier.  For the previous two years, I had been working in Business Affairs for a man named Sandy in the West Coast offices of a distribution arm of CBS. Phil was in-house producer of movies for TV and Sandy and I prepared the talent contracts. 

I will always love Sandy for giving me a job when I was so clearly falling apart.  It’s embarrassing to admit this, but I actually started to cry in my interview with him.  Rick, the love of my life, had died a few months earlier and I was not dealing with it at all well.  Instead of showing me the door, Sandy said, Well, it’s time your luck changed and hired me right then and there.

For the first few months, I would take long walks at lunch and cry, then pull it together and go back to work.  Fortunately, Sandy didn’t know this and, even more fortunately, he was fun to work for.  He was a gift.

Shortly thereafter, our offices had moved from West Hollywood to CBS Studio Center, right across the street from my little one bedroom apartment.  Then everyone began to go separate ways.  Sandy was putting together a rock concert and I helped him at night and on weekends.  I could have gone with him but it wouldn’t guarantee permanent employment.  Meanwhile, I often worked longer hours than everyone else, except Phil, who tended to come in late and work late. 

Phil was in post-production on a film and he would ask me to do this or that for him after his assistant had gone home for the day.  Then, to my surprise, he offered me the job as his assistant.  I’m sure he must have seen me as a workaholic, which was true to an extent.  What he couldn’t have known was that I buried myself in work because I had nowhere else to be.

Rick’s death had been a shock, because sudden death always is, but it probably shouldn’t have been.  Still, it was as unexpected as the alcoholism that had inexplicably overtaken him six years earlier.  And it was the biggest loss of my life. 

I had never really had a family of my own; in my heart, Rick was my family.  Over the years, I’d felt closer to his mother, Bette, and to his younger sister and brother than I ever did my father or stepmother. 

My mother, once a promising stage actress, had been hospitalized several times since her teen years with what were referred to as nervous breakdowns but – I would eventually learn – was primarily schizophrenia, which she self medicated with lots and lots of beer. An only child, I had been legally removed from her custody at the age of 12 and placed with my father. I only saw my mother once or twice after that and she died eleven years later, when I was 23.

My father, also an alcoholic, but an angry one, was an actor turned screenwriter.  We’d had a turbulent relationship since I’d moved in with him and his new wife, who – she would tell me much later—considered me competition for the affections of her new husband.  I spent much of my teenage years alone in my room listening to music.  The Beach Boys song, In My Room expressed it well.