I drove across town to Caprock, sick with dread, and when I walked in, the walls of the lobby were covered in photographs, dozens of them, of my Frank and a little terrier surrounded by different children every time, at what looked like a childrens shelter.
I stood there, my fear turning to wonder.
That little girl of his was not one child but many, a rotating parade of them, because my Frank and Daisy had been visiting the local childrens shelter, bringing comfort to kids who had been taken from hard homes and had no one.
The staff explained. Frank had trained Daisy, a rescue himself, as a comfort dog, and every week he brought her to the emergency childrens shelter, the place where kids go when they have been removed from dangerous homes, frightened and alone. A dog, the social workers had told Frank, could reach a traumatized child when no adult could.
And the first Saturday of every month, he brought Daisy to Caprock for her checkup, and he always brought along whichever child at the shelter needed a special outing most that month, to help weigh Daisy and feel important and loved for an afternoon.
My allergic Frank, who sneezed at cats, had been dosing himself with medicine to bring a comfort dog to the most frightened, forgotten children in our town, and giving one of them a special day, every single month, for years.
The shelter director came to the clinic when they heard I was there. She wept telling me what Frank had meant. Hundreds of traumatized children, she said, had been comforted by Frank and Daisy over the years. For many, a visit from that gentle man and his little dog was the first safe, kind thing they had known in a long time.
She showed me a book the children had made, full of drawings of Frank and Daisy, and messages like, Frank made me not scared, and Daisy is my best friend.
I wept in that clinic. My husband of forty-three years, who I thought I knew completely, had been secretly comforting abused and abandoned children with a little dog, week after week, asking nothing.
I could not let that stop. I told the shelter I would take over Daisys care, and that I wanted to keep the visits going, the way Frank had.
And I do. Every week, Daisy and I go to the shelter, and I take my allergy medicine just like Frank, and we comfort the frightened children, and every first Saturday one of them helps me weigh Daisy and gets a special day.
My daughter did not know why I drove across town. Now she knows her daddy was a secret comfort to hundreds of hurt children. That little girl of his was every lonely child who needed him. I lost my Frank, but I found the astonishing kindness he lived, and I get to carry it on. He would be so proud. I am.