Learning about grief through time with a loyal dog

As any animal lover knows, your pets become more than just a pet. Sometimes you find that one animal that locks down your heart and never leaves. You can have other pets, but they will never be as special as that one furry love.

Lily is that pet to Ted. She stole his heart as a puppy and has had it locked down for the past 12 years, which is 84 in dog years. Lily and Ted are best friends who share everything, good times and bad, pizza and monopoly nights, ice cream and movies.

Beware, there may be tears ahead if you read “Lily and the Octopus” by Steven Rowley! I don’t usually like to read books that make me sad or make me cry, and I especially don’t want to read books where the dog dies after losing my own dog. However, Lily stole my heart just like she stole Ted’s.

The first thing you need to know about “Lily and the Octopus” is that Lily dies in the end. This isn’t a secret. We find out in the first few pages that she has an octopus on her head. This is what Ted calls the tumor slowly taking over Lily. The outcome of this book is not what you need to think about. It is the journey that Lily and Ted take that is important.

The second thing you need to know is that Lily talks. Whether this is all in Ted’s mind or there is a bit of magical realism going on in the book doesn’t matter because Lily is full of joy. I listened to the audio version of this book and thought her voice was a bit magical. She sounds exactly like I imagine a dog would sound like.

The third thing is the octopus. We know what the octopus is, even though Ted refuses to acknowledge it. The octopus also has a voice and it is the antagonist of this tale. Ted and Lily must battle this octopus until they are forced to give up the fight. I will admit that the final battle with the octopus got a bit weird for me, but that is probably the only scene in the entire book that I didn’t love.

Ultimately, this is a book about coming to terms with grief and learning to live and love again. Lily teaches us that we have so much to share with the world and that our capacity for love is not locked into one individual being. What “Lily and the Octopus” gave me was the memory of the pain of loss, but most importantly, the memory of love and it all being worth it. Animals and humans alike, they’re worth it in the end.

As Rowley says, “Dogs are always good and full of selfless love. They are undiluted vessels of joy who never, ever deserve anything bad that happens to them.” Unfortunately, we don’t always get what we deserve and dogs don’t live forever, except in our hearts.

Angie Bayne is the Assistant Director at Missouri River Regional Library.