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Even the house aches with emptiness
By ella | February 21, 2008
‘We can all have breakfast together now,’ I say brightly but my heart aches with emptiness.
Two nights ago I was awake from 2am sitting with my poorly dog.
Last night I was awake from 3am, grieving for her.
*********
‘Defa doesn’t seem quite herself this evening,’ I say to Matthew as he gets home on Monday. We both look at her. She’s looking at us expectantly, greedily, for food, for something, anything. But he knows better than to contradict me given I seem to have developed a sixth sense about her well-being.
Sure enough, the following morning I find Matthew clearing vomit off what looks like the entire kitchen floor. Later a friend calls, but looking across at the dog I tell her I don’t want to leave Defa and invite her round instead. At lunchtime the vet does what he usually does - an anti-emetic and tells us to bring her back the following evening if she is dehydrated - and I take her home. But she continues to be sick. By the morning she is struggling to get the one step to her water bowl. At the vet’s they admit her and put her on another anti-emetic and as she is now on a drip, some opiate painkillers.
I have learnt to read the tone of voice of the various vets. Tim is relentlessly upbeat and I have learnt - the hard way with Brin - not to trust his optimism. Sarah is more candid but often guarded. But Jane, a locum, admits Defa today and when she calls saying there has been no improvement I can’t tell whether her slightly downbeat tone is normal for her. I feel gloomy and ask her to call me if her condition deteriorates but when I hang up I try to remain optimistic and hope she will be better in the morning.
A couple of hours later and the on-call night vet calls me. ‘It’s bad news about Defa,’ she says and I stupidly think how, if she is deteriorating, I can bundle the children in the car now as they have finished eating and go and see her. ‘She died sometime in the last twenty minutes after surgery closed and me checking on her when I arrived.’
**********
I am grateful that, in between the acute episodes of pancreatitis, she was in rude health. Even on Monday she was as well as she has ever been, chasing deer, birds, anything that moved, in the field. I am grateful for the love and loyalty she showed me. I am grateful for knowing for the last year that she was terminally ill and I could cherish the moments with her. I am grateful for her dragging me out on those bloody awful early morning walks while the rest of the family had breakfast together in the warm. I am grateful for just knowing her.
But I am indescribably sad that after nine years of near-constant companionship, she died alone, without me, without anyone even in the room with her.
That hurts. Terribly.
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Categories: All Gone Wrong, Dog Days
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