I guess I’m going to have to do some grieving in my life. This year, I suspect, will be one of a few to come.
I don’t do loss very well. I haven’t experienced it too much or too frequently. It’s 3.30am and I know I’m sad because I’m awake trying to keep my mind busy so I don’t let my mind drift on the entropy that is the temporary nature of things around me. One day this building will crumble. The footpath I walk on will someday disintegrate. The clothes I wear will be disposed of and my skin & organs will one day be ashes perhaps scattered in a place that is also temporary.
I’ve always recognised, in theory, that loss is the extraction of something in a person’s life that has always been there, or been there for a significant amount of time or even been present while significant things were happening. Grief is how one deals with that loss. I haven’t been close to my grandparents who have died over the years, but I feel the impact of their absence on my families. I’ve often looked at break ups as a death of sorts too. It’s that cutting of contact that jars me and it’s always inevitable.
My mind is drifting and I should be asleep but god, my throat is lumped and my heart physically feels heavier than it ever has. My best friend is dying. I’ve always been ridiculed for being soft and emotional about pets. When I was in primary school, my goldfish died. Sure, a goldfish – whatever right?. But Alfonso was the pet I fought for. I had a really lonely childhood, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I’d go to school, get bullied, come home and have no one to see or engage with. But one year, my parents agreed that I could get a fish. My Dad typically hated animals (he’s changed a lot) and so this was a big step. I wanted a dog, but okay, a goldfish.
So, Alfonso would follow my finger around the bowl. He would appear excited whenever I came to see him and he was just super stoked to be fed, from what I remember. Then one morning, he died. We had a wee burial spot for him in the garden and made a little cross. I avoided that spot for years, even up until my early 20s.
When I was 10, my parents hesitantly agreed to look after my brother’s cat, Elliot when he moved to Los Angeles. Wee white and ginger guy, best cat ever. Loved people, loved hugs, loved me. Not to be dramatic or anything but, it was refreshing to have something in my life that just loved me. Something that enjoyed having me around, regardless, unconditionally. The day he died, I wasn’t home but gosh, as a kid I was intuitive. I knew something was going to go wrong that day. So, when a neighbour found Elliot on the side of the road, I just didn’t know what to do, but I expected it. I cried. My brother cried over the phone too. We got other cats over the years to fill the void and they did somewhat and they had their charms and quips. It made everything lighter, I guess. But you just don’t get a cat like Elliot everyday. Or Mambo, who we got a few years after Elliot died. Mambo was put down late last year due to cancer. He spent 15 years hanging out at the primary school across the road from my parent’s house. He saw through buildings and renovations at that place. When my parents took him to the vet for the final time, he knew. He’s usually cooperative, but that day, he just knew.
My second to last year of university, my partner and I were evicted out of our flat. With 6 weeks notice, we were a little pissed off. It wasn’t our fault, but our house that we’d settled into was being uprooted from us. On a whim, my Dad and I went house hunting and found a small drafty 1930s cottage in a developing suburb. I fell in love with it and met the owner who told me about her love of the place and why she was selling it. When we put the offer in for it, there was another two offers in on it, but she recognised our name on the papers so, there it was. Once the due diligence was done and the settlement had come through, I started looking for a dog.
Sorry this is really long winded.
Anyway, I wanted a big dog. A Newfie or a Neapolitan Mastiff or a Saint Bernard. I went to the SPCA and I wanted a breed with some predictability – I’d never owned a dog before. So I visited a Cocker Spaniel breeder out west who just happened to have a litter who had all been adopted, but were just waiting a few weeks. She showed me these two wee black floppy eared pups. One of them nuzzled into my arm and fell asleep and my heart swelled up. That was it. I was getting a spaniel.
So the next litter arrived to a bitch named Paris and we were invited to pick one. My partner and I sped out one rainy afternoon after work and there was Paris with these wee little yelping fluffy things. “I think I want a girl,” I said to the breeder. I had no idea how to approach Paris, but she let us pat her and was very enthusiastic about it. I remember looking at all these spotty little pups and having the girls pointed out to us. Then I saw a black one with white paws. “That one?”
So it was. That one. The little black one with the white paws. I drove home that night, just grinning from ear to ear. In the weeks to come, we’d visit her every week until she was ready to come home at 8 weeks. Her and I bonded. I had no idea how dogs “worked” but she learned fetch quickly. She learnt how to chew things. But not shoes, but expensive things, like phones and wallets. Toilet training was a very lengthy, tiring, sleepless process. But, at the end of the day, she’d snuggle up next to me and fall asleep. Ten minutes later, she’d get up and go fetch a ball. I’ve always maintained that having a newborn is way easier than having a puppy.
I’ve sought out bush walks and beach walks that I wouldn’t have otherwise found if I didn’t have a dog. I know all the good spots. She hated water for the longest time, until we discovered the estuary at Bethells Beach. I’d throw the ball as far as the eye could see, and she’d paddle out into the stream and fetch it. There aren’t a lot of things that make me feel more alive than I do playing fetch on a black sand beach with her. Before I knew I was pregnant, she would often rest her head on my belly which she had never done before. She was overly protective too. When my son arrived, she was gentle and careful around him and protective too. She’s got all these little quirks about her.
As the years have gone by, she’s watched me bring up my son, watched my husband walk out, watched me graduate uni and pack up my house and grieve over other pets. We’ve spent hours exploring and swimming in weird creeks and lakes and roadtripping along the coast. She’s a city dog as much as she is a country dog. Overall, she’s been very healthy. Until last year.
While living at my parents’ (I’m allowed dogs in my apartment, but my flatmate doesn’t like them, so she doesn’t live with me), she developed an infection in her uterus which spread to her blood. They caught it just in time. However, after a few tests and a swollen lymph node, they concluded this week that it is cancer. Leukaemia. The infection also spread to her kidneys.
I blame myself. Apparently whenever I leave her, she goes into a state of sadness and becomes reclusive. Maybe if I was around, maybe if I didn’t make the choices I did, maybe if I chose to keep my family together, maybe she would be okay. But she’s not and soon, we have to put some decisions into place. To think in the next month, I won’t have her around, or in my life or existing. To think that my best friend, the one thing that never disappointed me and hung out with me unconditionally will be gone soon. Forever. Something that’s been there for a significant amount of time for all the significant bits, will no longer be. I’ve failed her.
I hurt all over and somehow my lying in bed trying to avoid the thought of entropy overtaking me was pointless. I’m still sitting in the window, wide awake, tears streaming down my face wondering how I’m going to get time off to say goodbye.
She sat there and stared at me. I was sobbing, just like I am now, except we were beside the beach, watching my son make a sandcastle. I booked a caravan at my favourite spot in Matauri Bay for us all to spend some time together. I hoped it would be a sign of things to come – us all together. Dog, kid, mum. But I scratched her chin and sat there as the tears just fell uncontrollably. Like, she knew she was getting sicker. Like she was telling me. I’m not big on spirituality these days, but I still have a fairly strong intuition and it sucks because at times, it breaks me but it’s almost always accurate. “I’m sorry Pep,” I said. “I’m so fucking sorry. You’ll be back with us soon, I promise.” She looked at me with trust and then got on with digging up my son’s sandcastle.
