A Homecoming Constant

An Ode To A Corgi Named Brynn - Part IV

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part III.5

The epic conclusion. Enjoy!

As Brynn grew out of her puppy state, we accepted our fates, and began to take separate paths in life, so to speak. Progressing into my 20s, I would stay in Bend for the next couple years, developing foregone friendships, totaling the car mentioned in part III, and accepting an internship at 10 Barrel Brewing a week before turning 21. 

But when the autumn of 2010 came around, I finally attended brewing school in Chicago and Germany, and afterwards found myself bouncing all over the US with brewing jobs. It seems once I had lived outside the state of Oregon, a sense of adventure was suddenly unlocked. Maybe escaping the pain of heartache from my first relationship was intertwined into this whole scheme as well.

Brynn fell into the background of my life at this point, staying with my parents; my father had developed a deeply keen love for her. The privilege was immense. I left the responsibilities of Brynn with him, without even questioning the decision. I had the ability of seeing her whenever I wanted, like an estranged uncle who shows up for the reunion every couple years. All the fun of living out my early 20s, making mistakes, attempting to carve out this ambiguous brewing path in life, without the responsibility of caring for a corgi named Brynn.

My parents ended up moving back to Portland in 2013, the strain of my father commuting back and forth every weekend growing tiresome. I shortly followed after, landing there in January of 2014, after a messy breakup which had originally brought me out to Vermont. I was back in Portland years after my first breakup, after so so long, it felt like. Returning was like a reset for myself, to be held by the city which raised me, by the places and people I knew from my formative years. There was comfort to be found in being somewhere I knew so well, after hopping around from state to state, city to city, over the last almost 4 years.

I became the assistant brewer at Old Town Brewing in NE Portland shortly after moving back, reunited with old friends from high school, and of course, reuniting with Brynn. This was the first time in years Brynn and I had been in one place together since adopting her back in 2008. My friends all loved her, and I think, loved having a corgi around. What wasn’t to like? As my friend, Tim, would say, “You had a corgi before it was cool”.

While a lot of my friends lived in Portland proper, I was living out in Lake Oswego with my folks in a split level home. Though Brynn and I were together again, I felt like I was trying to win her back, while simultaneously apologizing for being away all this time. To make up for the years I disappeared without notice, my coming and going. 

We did everything together, as she would come exclusively everywhere with me, to random errands, to the park to play soccer… A lot of time spent together, and it felt good. In my mind, it felt like we were mending bridges, or at least, this was the projection I superimposed on her. That year, Brynn even attended the annual Corgi Walk In The Pearl, with my friends tagging along. 

When things felt out of place, I felt like Brynn could be my refuge to seek shelter in. All I needed to do was bring her, and a soccer ball, to the park, and the world seemed to slow down for a little bit.

Our time together in Portland was fleeting. In April of 2015, I received the opportunity of a lifetime - I was recruited to run a brewery in the Western part of Ukraine. When I returned from a ridiculous chaotic week of visiting the Eastern European country, my decision to take the position wasn’t easy. Being so far away from family, friends, and, of course, Brynn, seemed like a daunting acceptance, but my father offered some sage advice: “If you don’t go, I’m going to kick your ass.” He went on explain, being in my mid-20s without any responsibilities, what did I have to lose? 

I had a disillusioned belief, mixed with just an inkling of hope, I would be able to bring Brynn along on my journey. But through my diligent research (a quick Google search), the process of allowing dogs into Ukraine was fairly dramatic, involving a 6 month quarantine - much more than I wanted to subject Brynn too (On top of the 20 plus hour flight, with multiple layovers, she would have to endure). Brynn was staying put in Portland. As often as I would often make jokes, “Brynn’s coming with me!”, my dad would let out a short loud laugh from the other room and remark, “No, she isn’t.” At this point, I knew she had unofficially become my dad’s dog, even though she had been his for a long long time. 

By mid-May of 2015, I was packed and on a flight out to Lviv, Ukraine, leaving Brynn behind, once again.

Brynn was on my mind constantly while living in Ukraine, posting photos of her on social media, and showing photos of her off to my Ukrainian friends and colleagues. Even though she was back in Portland, I did what I could to make it feel like she was with me (including having my parents hold her up on camera during Skype calls). 

I would visit home twice a year, usually around my birthday in mid-July, and then again around the holidays. Around this time I realized Brynn had become a constant throughout my whole life. She was always the first one of the welcoming committee to greet me at the door from the jet lag and long haul flight I would tolerate to return, and my hands were more than happy to provide Brynn with a ton of belly rubs. She was a reminder of “true home”; an anchor in which to hold onto when everything else may have felt like sand slipping through my fingers. My favorite moments with her were relaxing nights of watching movies on my laptop in bed, her splayed out at the bottom of the bed, taking up more room than necessary (or physically possible, it felt).

After almost three years in Ukraine, it was time to come home. As thrilling as living abroad, the distance away from family, friends, and my own country, took its toll on me. Despite having numerous friends and acquaintances in Ukraine, nothing beats the familiarity of your own culture. In the end, the ache from the loneliness persisted.

Post-Ukraine was almost a carbon copy of my early 20s, except now ten years later. My folks had moved down to Phoenix, Arizona, by this point, Brynn and Abby in tow. Almost immediately upon returning to the US in early 2018, I was again all over the place, helping open a brewery outside Austin, Texas, while simultaneously consulting with a few others all over the country, treating Phoenix as my homebase, coming and going constantly. From Phoenix, to Raleigh, to NYC.

I would see Brynn each frequent visit to my parent’s home in Phoenix, but as she grew older, Brynn seemed to recognize me less and less, and this substantially hurt. At 10 years old now, did she not see me the same way I say her, as this important figure in a life? Did my coming and going at my own convenience stifle our relationship, if not her memory of me?

The last time I saw Brynn was during my visit to Phoenix in February of 2023. I remember giving her a bath in the tub in the guest bathroom, something I had done a myriad of times before. But when I took the shower head, watching the warm water cascade across her body, I could see Brynn’s age within her eyes, glassy, almost milky, showing signs of cataracts, gunk gathering around the outside edges, permanently staining her fur. Her coat was thinning, losing its lustrous shine, rough and matted in areas where she would nibble at her hotspots. Her snout had turned a different shade. Drying Brynn off with a towel, all these elements converged, and I came to recognize her mortality. 

During my time there, our walks along the irrigation canal became shorter, almost a struggle, as Brynn would plant herself like cement, refusing to keep going… While I tried, if not insisted, to push her further, hoping to see a glimmer of the youngster I knew when I first adopted her. She was no longer the same energetic dog who loved tackling a soccer ball across a grass field, but instead a dog who was of old age.

After Abby, our other family dog, passed in the autumn of 2021, and then my mother the following January, I wondered if Brynn was ever cognizant of their absences. If she ever noticed me coming and going. If these spaces, once filled with the people she knew, now empty or ever changing, people coming and going, if Brynn was ever conscious of their movements. Did it hurt her as much as it hurt me to see these people come and go, sometimes forever? Or were they just dreams, so short lived in Brynn’s eyes, only to be forgotten by morning, or when the spoon scraped the bottom of the yogurt bowl, echoing throughout the house, waking her up from a nap?

Just a few short months after turning 15 years old last February, Brynn passed away in April while my father was visiting me out in NYC. My older sister called to say Brynn was having trouble breathing, lethargic almost, mentioning how she may have gotten into something while staying with my older sister in Phoenix.

The whole situation was nothing but pure panic and absolute grief. I felt like I was losing a significant part of my grounding, all while trying to show my father a good time around the city. 

We had just stepped off the York St subway stop in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, when my older sister called to reiterate what she had been told by the emergency veterinarian. The rumbling and grating wheels from the subway trains on the Manhattan bridge overhead echoed and reverberated against the buildings next to us, creating a deafening vacuum, impossible to hear what my sister was trying to tell me. My patience was instantly exhausted, as I walked furiously to different street corners, trying to comprehend what my sister was saying, my then-girlfriend and father tagging behind cautiously. I was angry, confused, feeling like an angsty teen again, not knowing where to shove my energy, wanting to scream with/at the passing chaos of the subway trains, and snap my phone in half. 

Why did this have to happen now? On this beautiful day, while my father was here visiting? Why did Brynn have to always make things so difficult? Exhausted from trying to hear my older sister, I passed my phone off to my father, suddenly realizing he may never get a chance to say goodbye to Brynn in person.

By the next morning, Brynn was gone. I was in our apartment bathroom when my older sister called my father early in the morning to deliver the news. I listened intently as he sat on the couch in our railroad apartment, letting out a sad, exhaustive, “Oh…”. From the tone of my father’s voice alone, I knew Brynn didn’t survive the night. I let out a “Fuck…”, the only way I could best articulate my grief at the time.

Part of me wondered if Brynn missed my father, heartbroken from the distance, from her world changing from the routine of existence in my parent’s house, to the temporary displacement of my older sister’s place. To suddenly see my father in every waking moment of her life, now worried maybe he had left forever, too. Heartbroken separation anxiety.

On the mid-April morning of his departure back to Phoenix, my father and I rode the subway together out to JFK airport. When we made the platform switch to the A train at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway stop, I understood my father would be heading home to an empty house; a house so representative of grief and loss in the past few years, the last thing I wanted was for him to be alone.

The swiping station at the JFK Airtrain was a scene of absolute disarray. People were trying to sell us Airtrain passes and the commotion of the space was disorienting. My father cried as we said goodbye, both of us separated by the turnstile, the general frenzy making us both forget this was where my journey along my father’s travel would halt. In those moments, I wish I had rode the Airtrain with him, gone through security, gotten on his flight, and made sure he didn’t walk through the door of his house alone.

I believe there is no worse feeling than returning home, time after time, and expect to hear the pitter-patter of paws approach you on the wooden floors, and hear none. To look up to your right and expect to find the smiling snot of a dog poking through the slits in the metal railing. And then realize, a corgi named Brynn, one who would greet you every time you walked through the door of any house, would never be there again. 

Because if she’s not there to welcome me home, then where am I?

Thank you, Brynn, for being my homecoming constant after all these years. Hope the yogurt is good wherever you are.

Thank you all for reading! Apologies again for the lengthy delay between some of the parts, yet I hope you really enjoyed this series.