`WHOEVER TOOK HIM STOLE HER HEART, TOO'; LOSS OF DOG REVIVES PAIN TOO DEEP TO SPEAK.Byline: Dennis McCarthy Dennis McCarthy may refer to:
IT was dark on their street that night, so dark that Sophie couldn't see her little black pug pug, breed of sturdy, compact toy dog that became popular in England during the 19th cent. It stands about 11 in. (27.9 cm) high at the shoulder and weighs from 14 to 18 lb (6.4–8.2 kg). dog as it ran excitedly to the end of the block to get some exercise after being inside most of the day. Sophie tried, but she couldn't keep up. She never could when her dog, Bou Boul, got antsy ant·sy adj. ant·si·er, ant·si·est Slang 1. Restless or impatient; fidgety: The long wait made the children antsy. 2. and hyper A Greek work meaning "above" or "more than." It is used as a prefix to technical concepts and products to convey a more advanced or more automatic capability. like this. She wasn't worried, though. When she would finally make it to the end of the block, he would be sitting there waiting for her like always, Sophie was sure - panting panting rapid, shallow breathing, a characteristic heat-losing reaction in dogs; represents an increase in dead-space ventilation resulting in heat loss without necessarily increasing oxygen uptake or carbon dioxide loss. and looking up at her with that quizzical quiz·zi·cal adj. 1. Suggesting puzzlement; questioning. 2. Teasing; mocking: "His face wore a somewhat quizzical almost impertinent air" Lawrence Durrell. look on his face, almost like he was asking her, ``What took you so long?'' But when Sophie finally got to the end of the block that night last month, Bou Boul wasn't there. Only his collar was. And now Fred Evenas, Sophie's husband, sits on the couch On the Couch is an Australian television program formally broadcast on the Fox Footy Channel and it focuses on the current issues in the AFL. This is now broadcast on Fox Sports after the closure of Fox Footy Channel. The show airs on Monday night and is hosted by Gerard Healy. in the couple's Encino home and talks about how his wife spends more time in the past than in the present these days. How sometimes she's unaware that he's even trying to talk to her. How the theft of a dog she has loved for 11 years has revived a pain from her past that is once again consuming her life more than 50 years later. All because someone saw a cute dog on the street and decided they wanted it. Someone who never spent one second to consider the pain they were leaving behind on that street corner. Pain that now has a proud, humble man like Fred Evenas reduced to tears and begging because he wants his wife to come back to him. They met in Paris shortly after the war, at a gathering of survivors. Sophie Lederman had survived Auschwitz and three other Nazi concentration camps
Prior to and during World War II, Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps (Konzentrationslager, abbreviated KZ or KL) throughout the territories it controlled. . Fred Evenas, a French infantryman, had survived five years in a Nazi POW camp. They had both come to this big hall in Paris with the same thought on their minds. The same thought everyone in this room had. Maybe, just maybe they would find a relative or friend still alive that they thought was dead. They didn't, not that night. But they did find each other. ``We spent hours talking about our families and what we had to do in the camps to survive,'' Fred says Monday, as Sophie sleeps in the next room. ``The Swedish Red Cross had taken about 300 girls from the camps back to Sweden with them after the camps were liberated lib·er·ate tr.v. lib·er·at·ed, lib·er·at·ing, lib·er·ates 1. To set free, as from oppression, confinement, or foreign control. 2. Chemistry To release (a gas, for example) from combination. . From there, Sophie was sent to France to live with some relatives. ``As we talked that night, she just melted my heart. We fell in love and were married a few months later. After two years, we came to America.'' America. A country where you could numb numb (num) anesthetic (1). numb adj. 1. Being unable or only partially able to feel sensation or pain; deadened or anesthetized. 2. the pains of the past while you worked on the dreams of the future. ``We struggled, of course, like everyone did, but compared with our past, it was easy,'' Fred says. They moved to the San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. in 1962. Fred worked as a clothing designer, Sophie mothered two children, a boy and a girl. They thrived, and they aged. And when the house emptied of children, Sophie looked around for someone to hold and mother again. She found a little black pug dog. ``We named him Bou Boul, which was a song that we both loved by a famous French singer named Maurice Chevalier,'' Fred says. ``She loved that dog so much. Whoever took him stole her heart, too. ``Sometimes, she doesn't answer me when I talk to her now. She's just so depressed. It's like all the pain in her past has come back to her now. ``I say to her, Sophie, we've gone through so much together. You lost everything, so did I. But we've had this beautiful life in America. Please, talk to me.'' He does not understand people who think he should simply go out and buy his wife another dog to get over the loss of this one. ``It's not like a piece of merchandise you lost, and now you'll go out and buy another one to replace it,'' he says. ``It's way too deep for that. Losing him has brought back the pain from her past.'' The imagery he talks about is searing sear 1 v. seared, sear·ing, sears v.tr. 1. To char, scorch, or burn the surface of with or as if with a hot instrument. See Synonyms at burn1. 2. . When Sophie closes her eyes now, she sees the faces of other young girls and women who never made it out of the Nazi concentration camps alive. That is the pain, the nightmare, a dog thief left her with last month. Fred Evenas says he's never begged before. Not even during those five years in a POW camp when he stared at death every day. But he's begging now. Someone stole his wife's heart, and he wants it back. |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion