1.
PASSING OF A UFPPC PEACE POOCH
By Kristi Nebel
United for Peace of Pierce County
October 9, 2010
The meeting for UFPPC on October 7, 2010, began with the usual suspects. Dave, Steve, Kristi, Mark, Terry, Marilyn, and Harpo were in attendance.
Harpo was a very large and intellectually challenged character who sat in the corner of our appointed room in First United Methodist Church in downtown Tacoma. The rest of us surrounded a table with concerns about the upcoming indictment of the Ploughshares group following their break-in to Trident at Bangor. We discussed carpooling to the march against the war in Afghanistan on Saturday. We talked about "Digging Deeper" books being considered for the discussions to come. We re-capped the speaker and movie event at the church the previous week.
Then, as we wound down, listening to Dave discuss his trip back to Kansas with its political overtones, Harpo took center stage. He quietly walked to the corner and puked. Marilyn took him outdoors hoping to evacuate any further problems, and returned to clean up the mess.
Dave tried to recover his composure and then Harpo got up, staggered with one failing leg, and made his way to the vacancy beneath the table with his huge girth. I watched him collapse and begin a slow rhythmic, deep pant. I said, "Harpo, you're having a rough time down there. Do dogs have strokes?"
Dave weakly finished his story and we decided to attend to Harpo, who wasn't budging. We separated the tables, exposing him, and he rose to his feet as Marilyn led him outdoors. I said, "Maybe we should call Doggie 911."
We exited the building to find her standing beside the huge dog firmly planted on the grass parking strip, unmoving but alive. Marilyn is too small to move a dog that big. She had been nurturing him in his aging infirmity, wondering what she'd do in this inevitable circumstance. We managed to find a tarp to make into a hammock to lift him into her little car. Terry accompanied them to the emergency room at the all-night vet hospital.
Harpo had had a ruptured spleen when he was exhibiting these problems, and was bleeding internally when he decided to join us at the table, choosing to be surrounded by his peace community as he died. He had cancer, undiagnosed, which had been rapidly overtaking his body in the past two months.
The vet euthanized him shortly thereafter. Marilyn is coping with living alone now, without her best friend.
--Kristi Nebel is a member of United for Peace of Pierce County (WA).
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