See, it was winter and I was walking down this long road.

Icicles were hanging from the trees from the ice storm two days before. It was that kind of day.

The kind of cold that leaves you breathless even at a normal pace.

The kind of cold that slaps you in the face and freezes the tears in your eyes before you can cry.

It was there just looking up into the trees that I remembered. The memory was the same as the cold.

For a split second I hoped maybe the cold would freeze it out too but it kept on coming and I walked a little faster.

I could see the dog’s leg and my father’s fingers gripping tight around the blanket it was carried in. Ten years of hunting and ten years of friendship went down that day in the field without a word. I stood there freezing and fanning for air as my father picked at the ground with his shovel.

He had asked me to come with him to bury his dog. I didn’t know why. Why is a man so still, I wondered in my twelve year old mind? Why is a man so still when so much is happening? Why would a man want his daughter to come with him when he buries his dog?

“Dad,” I said, “Will you ever have another bird dog?
”No.”, he said. “No.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Old Joe was the best. He’s the last. He’s the last.”

I picked up his matchbook from the ground near the blanket that he’d wrapped around the body of the dog.

“You dropped this, dad.” I rolled the matchbook around in my hand.

His shovel hit the ground with a piercing sound, like a hammer shattering glass.

Snow was coming fast.

I lit a match. My father dug. I lit more matches and let the snow take them.

Soon, Old Joe was laid to rest.

All my matches were gone. They lay there on the ground, all the little matchsticks, next to Old Joe’s grave.

I was thinking of winter and when it would be over. I was thinking I would come here in the spring after winter’s end.

I had grown up with Old Joe. I had raced with him in the open fields. I had fed him treats and watched him hunt. When I was very small, he was a pup. He greeted me every evening after school. He watched me grow up.

Mrs. Adams had said that everything has a beginning and everything has an ending. She taught my Sunday School class. She said God is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End….like it was with Old Joe.

I knew him from his beginning. Now, he is gone.

The finality of the moment was clear.

There was a death in me that day…there in the snow. There, with the burnt edged matchsticks.

My childhood went down that day. It went down with Old Joe.

Count the matchsticks…there were twelve. One for each of my years…. Old Joe and I started together, but today our journey together ended.. Omega.

Only for me, tomorrow will come. Alpha….a new beginning.