The deceased friend–Apollo relationship

The Deceased Friend’s relationship with Apollo begins in an act of rescue and survives the friend’s death as a bond carried forward by the Narrator. Apollo is not simply a reminder of the Deceased Friend: he is a huge, grieving animal whose needs reshape the lives of the people left behind. The care arranged for him gives the friend’s absence a practical consequence, while the Narrator’s attachment to Apollo becomes entangled with the hope, and the impossibility, of recovering the dead.

Finding, Choosing, and Naming Apollo

The Deceased Friend found Apollo early one morning while out running, after recovering from a back injury that had made even walking painful. The friend had been depressed during that period and lived by the conviction that walking was necessary to writing; once the injury healed, running and long walks returned, along with renewed socializing. On one of those outings, a massive Great Dane stood silhouetted on an overhang. He had no collar or tags, and the Deceased Friend tried to find his owner before deciding to keep him.

The decision brought Apollo into a household that was not equally prepared to welcome him. The Deceased Friend’s wife was not fond of dogs, and Apollo’s size made the practical demands impossible to ignore: he stood thirty-four inches from shoulder to paw and weighed a hundred and eighty pounds. A photograph sent to the Narrator showed the friend cheek to jowl with the dog, whose enormous head could be mistaken at first glance for a pony’s. The image records intimacy in a strikingly physical form: the friend beside an animal large enough to dominate the frame.

The dog’s first name did not last. The Deceased Friend considered names including Dino, Chance, Chauncy, Diego, Watson, Rolfe, Arlo, and Alfie, then decided that Dino sounded undignified. The final choice, Apollo, reflected the friend’s sense that the dog deserved a name suited to his bearing. Naming marks the transition from an unidentified animal found outdoors to a particular companion claimed and cherished.

A Shared Home, and Its Limits

Apollo’s presence became a point of conflict between the Deceased Friend and the wife. She could feel sorry for an abandoned, beautiful animal and still object to living with a dog who occupied so much space. She refused to share responsibility for him, especially when the friend had to travel, and asked that he be placed with someone else. The difficulty was not that Apollo was badly behaved; the wife described him as a good dog. Rather, she had never wanted a dog, and did not want the obligations that came with this one.

After the Deceased Friend died, those tensions acquired a different weight. The wife explained that Apollo did not understand why his person would not come home. He waited by the door, sometimes stopped eating, and made a low, strange keening sound. Treats did not distract him; once, he even growled at her. The waiting and cries repeatedly reopened her own grief, until she felt unable to remain in the house with him. She sent Apollo to a kennel, not because she thought the choice painless, but because she did not know what else to do. She feared returning him to the house would be cruel, and said she could not imagine him becoming happy there again.

Care Planned Beyond Death

The Deceased Friend left no written farewell and did not change a will made years earlier, but had told the wife that the Narrator loved animals, lived alone, worked mostly from home, and had no partner, children, or pets. The friend apparently understood the Narrator as a possible caretaker for Apollo. In retrospect, the Narrator imagines that the dog’s fate may have been among the questions occupying the friend before the suicide. The possibility that a conversation about Apollo might have exposed what the friend was contemplating remains a painful speculation, not a fact the narration can settle.

The wife eventually told the Narrator that she had asked the Deceased Friend to find someone else for Apollo, which was how the Narrator’s name came up. She considered keeping him, but Apollo was already about five years old and Great Danes have a short life expectancy, perhaps six to eight years. She also anticipated resentment, did not want Apollo’s care to complicate her feelings about the Deceased Friend, and hoped to travel after retirement. With animal sanctuaries reporting long waiting lists, the alternatives seemed increasingly bleak: a stranger, a pound, or a costly kennel. Apollo’s move to the Narrator’s home therefore fulfilled a care arrangement the Deceased Friend had anticipated, even though the friend had not directly discussed it with the Narrator.

Apollo After the Deceased Friend

In his new home Apollo grew used to the Narrator, who tried not to leave him alone except when school required it. The Narrator found it difficult to tell whether Apollo enjoyed being massaged or merely tolerated it; he seemed to prefer a chest rub and dislike having his paws touched. When the Narrator returned, Apollo greeted them with a wistful wag and what seemed like the look of an animal exhausted by waiting. The Narrator wondered whether Apollo had been standing by the door throughout the absence, and whether he was still waiting for the Deceased Friend.

That uncertainty links Apollo’s present attachment to his former one without making the two relationships interchangeable. The Narrator worries that another move could harm Apollo, perhaps causing problems severe enough to lead to his being put down, and feels compelled to save him. At the same time, the Narrator recognizes the impossible hope inside that devotion: that loving the beautiful, aging, melancholy Apollo might somehow bring the Deceased Friend back. The care is real and consequential, but it cannot reverse death.

Continuing Bonds and the Unfinished Farewell

On the anniversary of the Deceased Friend’s death, the Narrator watches a video of the friend giving a reading and wonders whether Apollo would recognize the voice. Apollo does not appear to focus on images on a screen, but the Narrator fears that hearing the familiar voice could distress him, or make him believe the Deceased Friend was trapped inside the device. The withheld experiment shows how care for Apollo includes attention to what cannot be known about his memory and experience. It also leaves the friend’s voice suspended between possible comfort and possible harm.

The narration repeatedly returns to the fact of missing the Deceased Friend, first through the language of a conditional world in which what might have happened remains imaginable, and later in direct, plain statements of daily absence. Apollo sustains a continuing connection to the friend, but does not function as a replacement. Near the end, the Narrator wonders whether an address meant for the Deceased Friend is actually meant for the self, admitting that the boundary has blurred. The final effort to call the friend’s name fails in the Narrator’s throat, followed by an exclamation of grief for the lost friend. The relation thus ends without emotional closure: Apollo remains, the friend remains absent, and the act of caring cannot make farewell complete.