Farewell...

Well, our dearest most darling dog has died. We had to help him on his way as despite his body pretty much shutting down his little heart was still pumping away. Richard, the homeopathic vet, had given us a remedy, Arsen Alb, which speeds up the dying process, it works 50% of the time but not for Nutty. But it did slow things down for him, I think. He was lying beside my bed all night and he woke me up about 3 times with other-worldly groans. He didn’t seem to be in pain but the sound was the sound of dying, a groaning whimpering, like he was neither dead nor really alive, but moving to a new place.

 In a way perhaps it is better he had the injection. If he had died naturally I would not have believed he was really dead and probably had to go to the vet to confirm.

Now he has gone, I feel utterly numb. My chest is full of tears, my solar plexus feels like there is a stone lodged in it and I am deeply sad. But also quite philosophical and relieved that the worst is over. Nutty is released from his old, sick body and can be reborn into a young and healthy dog, or more likely in his case, as he was such an extraordinary spiritual and compassionate creature, another human being.

The late Bill Weston, a very wise Buddhist friend, used to say that animals that had become so close to their human companions would be reborn as humans. Knowing the sort of dog Nutty was, and how evolved he was, that is easy to believe. I never saw him show a negative emotion. Even when the Tinies moved in he was relaxed and happy to have them around. He was never upset when they stole his food (he was a very considered, slow eater), never jealous that he now had to share us with them. He was just pure love, love, love.

He was the centre of my life for the last 4 years and I miss him, miss him, miss him.

I have been googling up Buddhist guidance about losing pets and there is a lot of helpful stuff. Buddhists believe that all people have been our parents at some time and many Buddhist schools go on to say that all living beings have been our parents. While I have no problem believing that all other humans may have been my parent at some stage, it is a leap of faith to believe all animals have been our parents. You might say, but more and more people are being born than in any other time in the world’s history, how can we all have a connection? The answer to that is that they come from other planets, other solar systems. Not so far-fetched when you consider even scientists are now recognising the existence of other planets apart from our own small one.

After talking to Magdosha the homeopath yesterday, she reassured me that he will be reborn and that I can determine to meet him again. This may seem wishful thinking, but I’ve never had any trouble believing in reincarnation for humans, so if you believe in reincarnation for us, it is a very small leap to believe in reincarnation for other species.

So I don’t necessarily believe that, say some poor battery chicken has been my mother, but I do believe that chicken will die and be reborn into the world again, in some shape or form. And as for a dog like Nutty, with such close connection and influence on his humans, well I do find it easy to believe that he will be reborn in favourable circumstances.

That dog taught me so much about compassion. I know understand why parents of severely disabled children mourn their early death so desperately, for I love a dumb animal who cannot talk or communicate in a `human’ way and yet the love and soul communication is perhaps deeper than with those I can speak to in my own human language. But there is a language of the heart and some animals can speak that fluently.  

Unsurprisingly the day didn’t start off very well. I’d had a bad night, what with the Tinies on the bed, Nutty’s throes of death and my dear pal wandering around upstairs at 5am.

So at 8.30am, when I finally dragged myself out of bed, I felt Nutty and his beating heart… incredible….. how awful that the one thing I have been dreading for 4 years (that he stop breathing) was the thing I now hoped for. I had no choice. I am strong willed, but even I cannot fight the cycle of death, however much I might desperately want to.

I came in to see him and to our amazement, he was sitting up, licking his skinny, blood-stained paws. But he didn’t appear to recognise me, although yesterday I did elicit, oh joy! a small tail wag when I stroked him.

Before his decline (which has only been this last week), he was always so happy to see me in the morning. That was `our’ time when he would wake up and make his way to my bed and wander round looking for loves and strokes. He was never a cuddly dog. He didn’t enjoy being on the sofa, rug or a bed, although he would often enjoy a big scratch of the bedcovers if we lifted him up for a bit.

He was always happiest on the wooden floor. I could see that many times he would almost endure my cuddles through gritted teeth, like a son being cuddled by his attentive mother and longing for it to end! But I always loved stroking my boy’s beautiful tawny fur and kissing his little snout, even though he would often close his eyes in distaste, `oh please hurry up Mummy!’.

And yet, wherever I was in the flat, he would always wander around until he found me. He would climb upstairs, downstairs, clip clop, clip clop, `oh where is my mummy?’  

Steve always accepted ruefully that I was the most loved, that given the choice, Nutty would always follow me. I had a little game where I would walk round and round the sofa and Nutty would just keep following me in circles. Steve would reach out and stroke him, but Nutty would ignore him, so focused was he on following me.

So I rang the vet in Elizabeth Street and she only had an 11am slot  and didn’t have time to make a home visit, which we would so much have preferred. I was aware, making the appointment with the receptionist that this was the very last time I would refer to Nutty in the present tense...I kept quite calm, I didn't cry. After 6 months of crying on tap, now the very worst thing is happening I went into auto-pilot. I've realised that when the very worst things are happening to us, something in the human phyche kicks in to get us through. It's only later that the numbness fades and is replaced by raw, excruciating pain.

So, come the time, Steve took Nutty downstairs and we carried him to the car. I sat in the back on the floor so I could kiss and stroke him and tell him how much I loved him.

But he hates the car so we were sad to put him through it for his final day, and unfortunately the traffic was heavy, which just made it all harder.

I had to carry him into the vet because Steve needed to park up. I thought I would carry him, just to have the final cuddle and contact. But that wasn’t so good because in my distress I couldn’t remember which part of Elizabeth street the horrible vets' was.

With hysteria welling up in my chest I had to place Nutty gently onto the raised step outside a house while I called the vet in a panic. They gave me directions, it was only a few houses down, and I picked Nutty up carefully and carried him gently inside.

The unpleasant receptionist (God we hate this place), said `oh the vet is still doing paper work, you can’t go straight in’, even though when I called I had said, `is the vet free because I will wait outside until she is', (I didn’t want the invasion of privacy you get in these places with everyone staring at you), and she said yes she was free. But although she tried to make me stop and dump Nutty on the floor or whatever, I insisted that I put Nutty down on his final resting place, rather than be carried from pillar to post.

Anyway, the vet was professionally sympathetic, not like Richard of course, but she was the best we could do at short notice, and I really didn’t want to keep the beloved going any longer as he was really shutting down and could have started to suffer. He hadn’t eaten for 5 days or peed for a day and I could smell urine on his breath, like it had been going round and round his body with nowhere to get out. Richard had explained that toxins would be building up in his body and it would be unfair to keep him alive another day.

Unbelievably, this vet then explained we needed to sign a consent form, fair enough, but astonishingly, given that I had phoned up that morning explaining the situation and that our dog needed to be put down, she then disappeared for 5 MINUTES to get `the paperwork’, (this vet seems obsessed by paperwork), why hadn’t she pulled out her wretched form, which only consisted of a few lines anyway.

The vet nurse stood impassively by, saying nothing, and the vet then shaved Nutty’s leg, quite gently, thank goodness, and quickly put the needle in. Nutty didn’t flinch, by now he was so far gone he was not very aware of very much. S and I were steady and emotionalness. We had been preparing for this moment for months and had cried and railed, but we were strangely calm. Later S said he had been chanting to himself, I had just been numbly focused on the moment, blank really.

Then, literally, within seconds he was dead. The vet gave us a pep talk, in special compassionate tones about what we wanted to do with the body etc. We took Nutty’s floppy little soft body in our arms, I paid the bill to the hatchet-faced receptionist who did not even offer a crumb of comfort, so cold-blooded was she, `thank you for your kindness’ I said sarcastically, but she was so inhuman she didn’t blink.

I went to the car, S had put Nutty in the boot, but I took him out of the boot and put him in the back with me. We drove to Guildford in silence mostly, talking a bit about Nutty and the good times, my hand on his tawny back for the last time.

My great regret was that the ending might not have been as tranquil for him as he deserved. Thanks to the beastly car, traffic, S’s bad temper, and then my grief and getting lost (only for a short time), it’s not what I wanted. And yet WE DID OUR BEST, in our horrible imperfect human way.

But things got much better. S calmed down a bit as we drove. The sun had gone in and the Surrey countryside was shrouded in gloomy grey cloud. We pulled into Longdown road, for the first time in a year, since we sold the house where I grew up. We slipped into our field opposite, that my Mother left us, which was overgrown, wild and rather beautiful.

We put Nutty in his pram for the last time and wheeled him down the gravelly drive and into the field. It was hard to push his pram though the thigh-high grasses, poppy and wild flowers and we struggled to the corner of the field.

The ground here was too hard to dig, so S found a spot nearer one of the fruit trees we planted in memory of mum in 2009, where the soil was a bit easier to dig. But it was hard going but thanks to S we dug a reasonable grave for the Beloved, wrapped him in his towel and placed him in the ground. We put the soil back over him and I placed a rough posy of wild flowers on top.

We did memorial gongyo and chanted a bit for him. I wrote a temporary note explaining to the nice gardening people who are tending the field that we had buried our beloved dog. I will organise a beautiful headstone, or wooden plaque like we had for mum’s grave in due course. And now we have a spot where we can pay our respects and remember and cherish him.

As we were leaving I asked S to go back and find out the name of the tree under which Nutty was buried (it seems unbelievable, Nutty! Buried!) Our vital boy is no more.

There was a gasp as S shouted, `It’s a Celestial Dogwood!’.

Talk about a wonderful and mystic coincidence.

For Nutty was truly, our Celestial Dog.

I looked up celestial and it means heavenly, holy, spiritual, godly, otherworldly, saintly…. All these words describe our beautiful boy to a t.

We drove back to London feeling a bit more philosophical. Ceremonies are comforting. We opened our front door to paroxisms of delight from the delighted Tinies who were so happy to see us. 

And so life must go on. They are life and Nutty is gone.

I pray that Nutty and I will meet again and that I will again have the privilege of loving another creature with all my heart, unconditionally. I hope other dogs will come into my life that I can help and who I can share this bond with. I need hope as the emptiness I feel now I have finally lost the creature I loved more than any other in the world is just too gut-wrenching to contemplate.

Yet in a way I feel relief that it is over. Living with a dying person is so exhausting, you long to help them, and yet there is only so much you can do. I nursed him to the best of my ability, until there was nothing else I could do.

I came home and threw away his little syringes. The blood stained rug that smells so strongly of him… S said oh wash it, it stinks, but I love the smell of it. Yes it smells of cancer, but I never minded his smell, because it was him.

And so we go to bed, calm, sad, broken-hearted, with some relief that Nutty is now free.

Goodnight my darling, I will miss you more than words can say.

A Long Lost Aunt Invites Me to the Savoy For a Drink

It was quite a surprise to get a call from Teflon Dad yesterday, to tell me that he is staying at the Savoy with my stepmother and his sister Pam, who is on a flying visit from Vancouver. Would I, together with Eco Brother like to join them for a drink at the American Bar at 5pm sharp?

Well of course!

I know very little about aunt Pam, or New Aunt, as I shall call her from now on, as my father, being historically Teflon coated has never been very keen on his sisters (he has loads and they are all quite mad). Over the years I have pieced together various bits of information to get a vague picture of them all. He has always been slightly keener on New Aunt than any of the others and as my stepmother has forged a close friendship with her, they have become quite close.

Eco Brother and I both convene in the lobby, agreeing that we usually prefer to avoid the West End on a Saturday evening. I would have added, `it's a bit too tunnel and bridges for me', but Eco Brother is an anarchist and might find that a bit too snobbish. But somewhere in his water I know he agrees with me.

It is certainly very hectic in the American bar, it's packed with all sorts, mainly tourists I imagine. Who else could face paying 30 quid for a glass of fizz? There is a choice of 27 champagnes served by the glass but mindful of Teflon Dad's horrendous bill I went for the house fizz, Louis Roederer.

New Aunt was a delight. She was celebrating her 70th birthday and like Teflon Dad looks very good for her age and is blessed with good, unlined skin. She was very easy to chat to and I could see was excited to meet her new niece and nephew for the first time. It's always so lovely to discover an amenable new rello, especially as you get older.

I was eagerly looking for familial similarities and she and Teflon Dad did look quite similar. They both had large square heads, steely blue eyes and strong jaws. Teflon Dad is as strong as an ox and New Aunt had the same robust quality. But they are essentially good eggs, decent and kind people.

My family are quite puritanical (they are Roundheads not Cavaliers) so I was disappointed they did not choose something from the famous cocktail list, which looked incredibly tempting. Eco Brother (definitely a Digger, to continue with the Civil War analogies) said he had a glass of wine the night before so didn't think he should have anothe one quite so soon afterwards so instead opted for a cup of tea, as did New Aunt. Teflon Dad had several G and T's (with Bombay Gin) and Stepmother had several glasses of white wine.

We all had a very jolly time indeed, despite fierce rows about Lady Thatcher (Eco Brother typically anti, Teflon Dad and me pro and New Aunt and Stepmother pretty keen too). What did poor Eco Brother do to be born into such a family of right wing capitalists?

As we were leaving the bar, Eco Brother gets into conversation with the waiter about the olives on the table. `Will you be able to give them to another customer or will they be thrown away?' The waiter predictably says they will be thrown away, at which Eco Brother and I shudder with the horror of Food Waste. I hastily pack up the biscuits that came with the tea and he pulls out an old plastic bag from his grubby rucksack and politely but firmly suggests that the waiter to tip the olives into it. The waiter looks quite aghast, but there is nothing he can really do. Eco Brother, for all his anarchist ways, is it must be remembered, son of Teflon Dad and a long line of Alpha people who are used to getting their way.

Afterwards, Eco Brother zoomed back to Notting Hill on his bike with his olives, and I went upstairs to check out the family's luxurious suite. Oh what heaven. I stayed at the Savoy years ago when it was rather moth-eaten, but the rooms are so much more comfortable now. Huge beds, elegant parquet flooring and a stunning view over the misty grey river and the London Eye. Truly I was a pig in clover.

We stayed up, chatting away till about 9pm before I called it a day. The emphasis is more on alcohol than food in my family so I was pretty starved. Poor stepmother has no appetite because of this wretched cancer. The morphine keeps her going and relieves the pain but she is so weak and hugging her goodbye was like hugging a bag of bones. Her mind is razor sharp and if you didn't know, you might well think there was nothing wrong at all.

But poor Teflon Dad is quietly devastated. But what can you do? What can you say? We talked about how she was feeling, how good the Macmillan nurses are... I'm glad we can discuss her cancer quite openly. It would be worse to push it under the table.

Life is so fleeting and so much time is spent worrying about stuff that in the long run is of no importance. She has loved my father for 35 years but they have only been married 3 years, when he finally realised how much he cared for her. Until then he had been busy at work and taking her for granted and playing the field.

It's ironic that it is only when he finally realises how much he loves her that he must face up to losing her.

The Power Of The Dog

I am still really under the weather with a horrible virus that doesn’t seem to be letting up. I went to see my psychic nutritionist today so she could douse on what medicines I should be taking. Nothing I have tried so far is working and she suggested various other things that luckily I have at home, like zinc and some Dr Recweg homeopathic tinctures. I have cupboards full of this kind of stuff, it’s really like the Mind Body and Spirit exhibition in here.

She also reminded me about basic stuff like a good face steam under a towel with eucalyptus. I was going to, but I’m so tired I think I’ll just have a hot bath and read my compulsively readable Rod Steward autobiography. I asked her what the emotional trigger was for getting ill and we both thought it was the horror of dealing with Nutty’s cancer diagnosis…. I was crying solidly for 6 weeks and I know that had everything to do with me getting to a really low physical ebb.

Crying is exhausting. I am all cried out now, except when I am going to sleep and the full horror of what the poor little fellow is going through hits me and I start to worry about the inevitable result of it all. …. But to be fair, he is not suffering so much I don’t think. He is not in pain and is still eating well and wagging his tail quite a bit (except when I am syphoning his flax seed oil mixture that the vet recommended into his mouth. Flax seed oil has strong anti-cancer properties, there is masses of research about it online).

The last few days there has been quite a lot of bright red blood from his mouth, usually when he’s eating. We always have to have lots of tissue paper under his mouth to catch it. We wash out his mouth regularly with a dilution of hydrogen peroxide, which seems to have prevented his tumour from becoming infected.

I see him staggering around the flat, looking a little dishevelled, wobbly, glazed eyes and his bleeding mouth encrusted with blood and think, this is old age. Old age that is usually confined within old people’s homes and hospitals. But this slow decline towards death is what most of us will face. The papers and TV are full of bright, shiny, young, shouty people and we are insulated against the ravages of aging. I am witnessing nature, in my face, in my flat, in its raw and cruel state.

I hate it of course, but it is nature and there is nothing any of us can do about it. It makes me appreciate my health (when I am not bronchial of course), that I can run, nearly do the splits, hit a tennis ball hard. My body gives me no trouble or pain (she says sneezing).

 I read this lovely poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Robert Graves for the first time a few days ago. It made me think of Nutty, in all his radiant, tawny, golden glory, before he got ill.

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.   And here is my favourite dog poem, The Power of the Dog, by Rudyard Kipling, after which I named this blog (a tear in the heart is one of its lines). Read it and weep.     The Power of the Dog   There is sorrow enough in the natural way From men and women to fill our day; And when we are certain of sorrow in store, Why do we always arrange for more? Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware Of giving your heart to a dog to tear. Buy a pup and your money will buy Love unflinching that cannot lie-- Perfect passion and worship fed By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head. Nevertheless it is hardly fair To risk your heart for a dog to tear. When the fourteen years which Nature permits Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits, And the vet's unspoken prescription runs To lethal chambers or loaded guns, Then you will find--it's your own affair-- But...you've given your heart for a dog to tear. When the body that lived at your single will, With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!); When the spirit that answered your every mood Is gone--wherever it goes--for good, You will discover how much you care, And will give your heart for the dog to tear. We've sorrow enough in the natural way, When it comes to burying Christian clay. Our loves are not given, but only lent, At compound interest of cent per cent. Though it is not always the case, I believe, That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve: For, when debts are payable, right or wrong, A short-time loan is as bad as a long-- So why in Heaven (before we are there) Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear? ................................ (Nutty has his own page on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/nutty.nutkin ) This is an excerpt from my new book, Letting Go of the Glitz, one woman's struggle to live the simple life in Chelsea, by Julia Stephenson just out in paperback and available from Amazon and about 3 bookshops.