Dog's Heartfelt Obituary Goes Viral: 'He Was Best At Unconditional Love'
A very good dog got one last special treat from his favourite human.
Charlie, a beloved golden retriever, was the first dog Sallie Gregory-Hammett of Greenville, South Carolina, ever had on her own. Gregory-Hammett, 30, got Charlie when she was 23, single and had just moved to a new city.
“I know it’s cliché but he was my best friend,” Gregory-Hammett wrote to HuffPost. “He went with me everywhere —work, hiking, trips to Home Depot. He was just a constant source of comfort and companionship and joy. Everyone that knew me knew Charlie and knew how much I loved him.”
She even jokingly added: “Whenever I would start dating someone, people would always say, ‘Does Charlie like him?’ But Charlie loved everyone, so that was never the question.”
This included Gregory-Hammett’s now-husband, David, whom she married in May in a tiny backyard ceremony.
“When I saw David interact with Charlie I just knew he was the one, because he loved Charlie as much as I did,” she said.
But Charlie seemed easy to love. He had many “quirks,” as Gregory-Hammett put it, which included jumping into water like “a weird kangaroo” and collecting lots and lots and lots of sticks.
“He picked up sticks on every single walk, that was how we knew he was tired,” Gregory-Hammett lovingly remembered. “He’d pick up a stick and that meant it was time to go home.”
Yet on September 13, after a five-month battle with lymphoma, Charlie passed on to that big farm in the sky — which, hopefully, for Charlie’s sake, is littered with lots and lots of Charlie-worthy sticks.
Gregory-Hammett was devastated by the loss, and told HuffPost she was trying to find an outlet for her grief — so she decided to write him an obituary.
“I’ve always loved writing, and when Charlie passed it was just so overwhelming that I needed to do something cathartic,” she said.
So she sat down and poured her heart out.
In her memorial, she noted all the things Charlie adored — smiling,...
