Part 8: Burial Detail
Jack buried Rex in the backyard the next morning, just as the first snow began to fall.
It wasn’t heavy yet—just a slow, drifting kind of snow, like the sky was trying to apologize for being so cold. Jack wore two jackets and fingerless gloves. His knee protested with every shovel thrust, but he didn’t stop. Not even when his breath came short or his vision blurred with cold and something else.
He picked the spot under the maple tree by the back fence. It got good shade in the summer and morning sun in spring. Rex had always liked lying there.
He wrapped the dog’s body in the Marine blanket. Tucked him in tight. Folded the corners like a flag.
He placed the collar on top.
Then he stood over the grave a long time, holding the shovel like a crutch.
“Semper Fi,” he said. Voice cracking. “Till the end.”
And then he began to cover the hole.
Afterward, Jack sat on the back step, shovel resting across his lap, watching the snow begin to stick to the grass.
He was shaking.
Not from cold.
From emptiness.
The house behind him was silent. Too silent. No soft breathing. No tail thump. No weight shifting on old bones near the heater.
He had prepared for grief. Or thought he had. He’d known Rex was near the end. But the absence—the sudden hole in the world where that presence used to be—was something else entirely.
Not pain.
Not sorrow.
Something colder.
Like he’d lost the last witness to his life.
In the afternoon, he built a marker from scrap wood he found in the shed.
Two planks. Nailed in a cross. Simple. Honest.
He carved the letters with a pocketknife, slow and deliberate, one stroke at a time.
REX
K9 – USMC
LOYAL TO THE LAST
He drove the cross into the ground at the head of the grave. Then he stood back and saluted—hand trembling, eyes sharp and dry.
No one saw him.
No one needed to.
It wasn’t for show.
It was for Rex.
That night, the heater worked harder than usual. It clicked and hummed like a tired engine, barely keeping the cold from seeping through the floorboards.
Jack sat in the armchair with a blanket over his legs, the silence pressing in.
He tried the television. Too loud.
He opened a book. Closed it after two pages.
He thought about drinking—really thought about it—but the bottle under the sink had dust on it now, and somehow that felt like a promise he didn’t want to break.
Instead, he opened the shoebox again.
The collar was gone, now buried.
But the photo was still there.
Rex, standing beside him in full gear. Both of them younger, sharper, their eyes still full of direction.
Jack stared at the image until the room blurred.
Then he said the words no one had ever said to him.
“I’m proud of you.”
Sleep didn’t come easy.
But when it finally did, Jack dreamed of sand.
Of footsteps.
Of a younger man and a younger dog, walking side by side through a field that hadn’t yet exploded.
And in that dream, no one was limping.
And nothing was broken.
And everything still made sense.