What Fix You Means to Me

We are singing a song in my show choir class called Fix You. We got an assignment to write a story about what the ballad means to us, and I just want to share it with you.

When I was six or seven years old I had a dog named Babe. Babe was a golden retriever, and she was my world. I loved that dog so much. But then she got sick. She ruptured two disks in her back, and was diagnosed with some disease I can’t recall. She couldn't walk, and she was getting worse every day. At this point in my life I was not quite familiar with death, and this was a very hard way to learn.

She spent several weeks in the pet hospital, and as a kid I thought the doctors would just fix her up and I would have my dog back. Then one day my dad walked in the door, and I asked him, as usual, if Babe was coming home soon. He gave me a look of profound sorrow and said, “I told them to end her suffering today.”

At first I didn’t understand, “So she’s alright?” I asked

My took me into my bed room and sat me down, looked into my eyes and said to me, “Robert, Babe isn’t coming home, she’s dead.”

My world no longer existed. She was gone. I sat there for the rest of the night until I fell asleep crying for my dog. I think I knew deep down that she was going to die, but I kept telling myself she would be alright. I wish I would have spent more time with her in the end, because I know it would have made her feel better to die with a friend.

I’m going to sing this song to myself back then, as an innocent child that was thrown into a situation that required a level of maturity far exceeding his own, and also to my dog Babe who I thought would be alive forever.