2021/2022
Collection 17

The Light Shines On

c. 1993; Florissant, Missouri, USA

Everything happens for a reason, sometimes for the better or for the worse. My grandma learned this lesson when she was forty-two. She lived in a house with her two kids, her husband, and a dog named Mickey. She also had a neighbor named Mr. Shepley. He didn’t have a lot of family visits. His wife had died a few years earlier, and his dog had recently died, too, but every time that Mr. Shepley saw Mickey, his face lit up with pure joy. He would reach over the fence at around noon every day to pet him. My grandma and her kids didn’t always have time to play with Mickey, so she said to Mr. Shepley, “You can walk him if you would like.” Mr. Shepley loved the idea, so every day at noon he would go over to take Mickey on a leisurely walk down the block and back.

Mr. Shepley did this for a year, until one month he started to come back earlier from their walks. Then one day he just stopped walking Mickey. My grandma was concerned, so she walked over to check on him. She knocked on the door, and Mr. Shepley’s son opened it. He invited her in and explained that Mr. Shepley had fallen and was moving to a nursing home to get better care.

The next day my grandma, her kids, and Mickey went to visit Mr. Shepley. He was so happy to have visitors, but most of all to see Mickey. Soon after visiting Mr. Shepley, Mickey started not eating and was sleeping by the fence. My grandma tried to hand-feed him or drag him away from the fence, but he stayed stationary.

Soon after that, my grandma took Mickey to visit Mr. Shepley. She hated seeing their gloomy faces when she and Mickey left. After some research, she found out that pets were allowed at Mr. Shepley’s nursing home. My grandma had a talk with her family, and they all decided that Mickey wasn’t happy and he needed a new home. So the next day they visited Mr. Shepley and told him the news. He was shocked, grateful, and extremely happy. The relationship between Mr. Shepley and Mickey deepened from there. My grandma briefly visited every so often.

Mickey lived a long life of twelve years. Soon after Mickey died, Mr. Shepley died at the age of eighty-seven. My grandma still says, “There are people who bring light into your world, but even after they are gone the light still shines on, just in a different form.”

Parker Holdmeier; Missouri, USA

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