Never Underestimate the Power of the Stuffed Animal

Dakin sat in the corner of the room, a place where he sat for the last few years, on a stack of my clothes piled up in a laundry basket. Jeremy, my neat freak live-in, would tie my ruana scarves around his neck and put my summer hats on his head, so that they remained off the bedroom floor. We called him traveling Dakin, because he looked like a tourist, but he never went anywhere. He just sat there with a blank expression, staring off into the blue wall.

When the call came that Nana was in the hospital, Dakin’s situation changed. Nana was very sick, in the hospital. Nana was dying. I knew this call was going to come sooner or later. I, a full-time student in my senior year with a full time job, just didn’t know it would be so difficult to get there to say goodbye. So I had to bide my time somehow and sent Dakin as an ambassador.

Dakin had been good to me. I was introduced to him probably later then I should have been. I was ten or eleven. I received him as a gift from my Nana. She had bought him for a play I was in at the community theatre. She and my cousins took their seats close to the front of the theatre, near stage right, Dakin in tow. He was a bunny with nubby ecru “fur,”which resembled that of lamb, not bunny. He was dressed in a pink sailor suit with a white hat and matching pink ribbons. I named him after his maker, a name I found on the tag. (zero creative points)

Even though I was older, I still had intense night terrors. The kind that wakes you up in a sweat and the only way to clear your mind is to turn on the lights. But I was always terrified to make the step out of my bed to turn them on. Dakin soothed me somehow. I don’t know if it was the thought of my Nana that helped me. That she picked him out with care. That somehow her energy passed to the inanimate object or if it was that he was pillowy soft and easy to cuddle. All I know is that he made me feel better, safer. Eventually, his tail fell off and went missing and his garb became worn and his fur picked up lint.

Nevertheless, I knew he was the one to go. And I hoped that perhaps my energy might be passed to Nana, I hoped that she’d be comforted. If she died before I made it there, that she would know that I loved her, that I thought of her, that I wanted to be there, I wanted to say goodbye.

Jeremy’s mother washed his dusty body in preparation and, half-dry, I brought him to work to be packaged by the shipper. I packed him in a small box, careful to cushion his journey with tissue. I sealed him in his vessel with a small note. He was second-day aired.

My grandmother was clutching him as I walked into her room days later. I was seeing her in her condition for the first time. In her other hand was a seashell my younger had brought her, tokens of our thoughts and love surrounded her. Her head was tilted up so she could breathe. She had refused any life support. And they took her off that morning I arrived. She was surrounded by her husband, five children, most of her nineteen grandchildren and one of the five of her great-grandchildren. And Dakin.

She died five days later. My mother, who stayed home from the hospital that night, the night she had been moved into hospice, went to see my Papa the morning she died. I heard the news and, tired from crying, crawled into my parents’ bed with my nine and ten year old brothers, turned on cartoons and took a nap.

When I awoke, Dakin was on the dining room table, the seashell tied to the ribbon around his collar. Remnants of Nana’s last days. An orphan of death. It was over. Only the smell of ivory soap, face lotion and hospital lingered on his slouchy body.

Later, at Nana and Papa’s house, my older cousins, sister and I thumbed through pictures, trying to find pictures of Nana for her funera. We spent an hour or so going through hundreds of pictures, spanning nearly eighty years, from black and whites, to the milky colors of the seventies and eighties, to the digital vivids of today. Close to the end of our project, Angela made a discovery. She handed the photograph to me. The date was stamped on the back, 1996, and from the background I could tell that it was taken at our favorite vacation spot by the beach. It was a picture of Nana, holding Dakin by her face.

She was smiling. His was stitched on.