TW: death
I subconsciously pay attention to magpies.
I think it became a thing some time in secondary school where my best friend from the ages of 11-14 would go through the whole rhyme (I don’t know if you could actually call it that to be honest, but let’s just go with it today) every time she saw a magpie.
One for sorrow.
Two for joy.
Three for a girl.
Four for a boy.
I think it might have gone on longer than that, but I have really only remembered those lines. I then discarded the last two because…what kids…?
So the first two have always stuck around with me and I mentally say them to myself whenever I spot the black and white markings of a magpie.
For a lot of the first quarter of this year, I saw them in pairs. Joy. I clung to that. 2022 was going to be a year of joy. It had to be, the last two years haven't had a lot of that going.
There was the odd occasion where I only saw a solitary magpie just picking at the grass.
Sorrow.
I knew what that would be for.
My dog died on 31st March at around 10:30. I didn’t think to look at the time when it was happening so I don’t know for sure, I just know that it happened between 10 and 11pm.
His death was both expected and unexpected.
Expected because he was 16 years and 8 months old. He’s been in the house since I was 13. I’m 29 now. Expected because over the last two years he has noticeably slowed down, he’s stopped going upstairs, stopped being able to make it through his long walks and was more interested in sniffing the daffodils than running around, he’d stopped jumping up on the sofa. Expected because we were surprised when he made it to his annual trip up North to the beach and actually managed to run around on the beach and frolic in the water, but deep we knew it would be the last time he would make that trip. Expected because we were surprised when he made it to Christmas, although there were signs that he was winding down because in all the excitement he tired himself out a lot earlier than usual. Expected because he was having increasing issues with getting up off the floor if he went down on the wrong side or at the wrong angle. Expected because the average age for a Labradoodle is 13/14.
But unexpected because I had spent the whole day with him, as I did most days because I work from home most of the time. It was a Thursday and I usually go in on Thursdays, but the office was booked up and I couldn’t. I was at home. It was a windy day and he loved the wind and so he kept wanting to go outside. I found it mildly annoying because it wasn’t warm outside despite the sun’s presence in the blue sky and I had to keep the door open, but he really didn’t ask for much and honestly, it’s 5 steps to the back door. It wasn’t a hardship. Unexpected because he had been so excited when my Mum came home at 6:30 and had happily gobbled up the Dentastix that she always gave him. They always say that dogs go off their food when they are nearing the end. Unexpected because you never really expect when you see your dog sleeping on his mat as he does several times a day that that will be the sleep that he doesn’t wake up from.
In hindsight, I know that I felt that evening was different to the rest. He’d slipped in the kitchen as sometimes happened in his old age and was directed to rest on his mat as that usually did the trick and once he was rested he was raring to go again. But that night he didn’t move once he was put there, not to attempt to nick some broccoli off my plate as I ate my dinner. Not to turn his head to see where a sound had come from before he decided not to do anything about it as he didn’t deem there to be an actual threat. He didn’t even blink awake in acknowledgement of my Mum stroking his nose as a goodnight before she went to bed.
She was back downstairs less than 5 minutes later saying her goodbyes.
He’d been sleeping all night. He was peaceful. I know now that I was watching him breathe all night for confirmation that he was still there. As the clock moved closer to midnight and I was sitting on the floor stroking him, I was looking at his ribcage - the same way I had been all night - and I knew. The heartbeat that I always subconsciously felt for whenever I stroked him (regardless of age) wasn’t there and I knew.
Shock was the first thing that hit. For some reason, my brain just kept replaying that one section of Albanza from In the Heights. ‘And she was just here. She was just here’. The logic of it didn't quite make sense. I just sat there numbly as people around me figured out what to do. I watched without really seeing much as my dad wrapped him up in a blanket we had gotten for the sofa so that we could keep them clean of the mud that he traipsed through the house.
I almost cried when my brother hugged me - we don’t hug much. He hasn’t hugged me like that since I came home at 17 in actual bits because I had failed my Spanish AS Level - the first exam I have ever failed in my life. He was 14 and still just about smaller than me. His bigger than me now. I actually cried when my Dad hugged me goodbye as he (and my Mum) went off with the blanket wrapped dog leaving me in the house completely on my own.
I fell to the floor and just cried. I’d been in the house on my own before, without him. It had only been for at most 5 days. Now it would be every day. And he wouldn’t walk through the door again. I cried again the following day when I looked at the space next to the microwave and saw all his opened treat bags and how most of them were halfway through (he liked variety). I threw them away in my tears. I threw away his daily vitamins - there were only 2 days left on that sleeve and I hadn’t said that he needed more because I was unsure whether it would be worth it. We all knew his days were numbered, we just didn’t know that they were so close to being up.
I have had brief brushes with grief before. Both my Dad’s parents are dead, but they weren’t the kind of grandparents that were intrinsic to my life and so I never felt their loss all that keenly but that was the closest I have ever been to it personally.
Until now that is.
I spent the following day in the house on my own but I still felt a bit numb. The weekend felt weird, I didn’t cry, but I did spend a lot of Saturday just looking at memories created with him. I looked at the last photo I took of him - him curled up and sleeping on his mat. He looked peaceful in that picture too. So similar to how he looked on that Thursday night. The Monday after was when my new reality settled in. By the end, I was the person who spent the most time with him, just because I was almost always at home.
It was weird at first. His stuff had all gone and there were now just these pockets of space where he had once inhabited but now didn’t. I didn’t have to unlock the back door so that he could let himself in and out as he pleased. I didn’t have to give him his two vitamins (then a treat) first thing in the morning. I didn’t have to put the kitchen gate across the entrance to stop him from going in while I popped out to the shops.
By the end of that day though, I realised that although I was still feeling a sense of sadness at the loss, I was no longer upset.
I had come to realise that in a lot of ways I had grieved losing him in the small things. The fact that I couldn’t snuggle up with him on the sofa anymore was a loss. The fact that he wouldn’t sneak his way into my seat on the sofa the moment I left was a loss. He no longer barged his way into my room when I was still asleep at 9am because he needed to account for my whereabouts in the house, that was a loss. The ways our walks got shorter and shorter until he only really wanted to go as far as a green space that is less than 5 minutes from our house was a loss.
There are probably so many others that have happened, especially after the last two years, that I had to mourn and grieve in smaller ways but they aren’t coming to me as readily as the big ones.
In the end, the only real big one that I hadn’t had to quite say goodbye to yet was him.
And even then, in the midst of my sadness and the big black furball sized hole he left in my life, there was a positive to be found.
As you do when you have a little old man for a dog there are discussions about when the time would be right to let them go. We had many discussions. His mobility wasn’t what it once was but he adapted. He was a little bit deaf and a little bit blind and in what ended up being the final week of his life he really stopped giving a shit about any and all obstacles and just walked through them if they were in his way (he took a lot of chairs down with him, it was almost funny how little he cared) but he adapted. He sometimes peed in the house and we adapted (and bought a nice smelling anti-bac). We talked often about when it would be the right time to let him go and we always came back to the same conclusion.
He would let us know.
We assumed that would be because he lost all interest in food and snacks. That never happened. We assumed that he would stop getting excited and trying to get up when someone (mostly Mum) walked through the door, or just at all. That never happened. We assumed a lot of things regarding his end and they just never happened.
But we were right about one thing.
He did let us know and he just went.
The shock and trauma of it all aside, it was probably the only way he would have wanted to go. He was surrounded by the people who loved him most at home. We weren’t calm about it, but he seemed to be at peace.
If we’d had to make the decision to put him down then we would have been wracked with guilt on top of everything else and he would have hated it. He knew the route to the vet surprisingly well for a dog that didn't have to go there all that often and he tensed up when he got within 5 minutes of the place. He would have been the opposite of at peace.
But he held on for as long as he could and then at 16 years and 8 months he made his decision.
He’d had a good innings.
There were some other small things that I hadn’t quite mourned the loss of because he was still here. And it’s those small things that are striking a nerve now more than the very big thing. Although initially they felt like big stabs to the heart, now they are more gentle. They get easier with every passing thought and I don’t have memories tinged with sadness, I just remember the fondness and the joy.
Not hearing his claws crashing against the floor as he follows me to the kitchen and then stands and stares expectantly waiting for a treat he knows deep down he going to get because he’s cute.
Not having him rush to meet me first thing in the morning for his vitamins and treat because I had conditioned him that way and he was mostly in it for the treat (seriously, I tried only giving him the two vitamins and stared at me like I’d gone mad asking for the 3rd thing).
Not having to get up on a regular basis because he had managed to lock himself out because he closed the door rather than hooked it open with his paw. Not having to do the final toilet break of the day and get him to go outside whether he wanted to or not because we all going to bed. Not having to unlock the back door at all actually.
Seeing daffodils on my walk and not having to wait for him to sniff (and probably pee) at them before he decided to return to me and walk by the side. I thought I had already mourned that one as he stopped doing that some time ago, but it came back with a vengeance recently and I have never been more grateful that my walking route is usually devoid of people. It meant I could cry.
Not seeing his mat and his sleeping body lying on or around it when I come downstairs or come back home.
Not having to save the last bite of toast and peanut butter for him. Not having to remove all the seeds out of the watermelon for him. Not having to cut off and save a bit of broccoli, chicken, potato, honestly, that list goes on, from my dinner to give to him (all his training truly went out the window the older he got, he got impatient with the tricks of it all).
Not having him decide that the minute I roll my mat out to work out is the exact same moment that he now wants to eat the food in his bowl which was directly next to my mat. Or that he wants to just stand and stare at some random spot on the wall while I am trying to do a walkout, or hold a plank or squat (side note, his height was the same depth as my squat in the early days so I used him as my measure, he never seemed remotely fussed about getting brushed my descending body and so almost never moved unless he got bored of standing there. Or if I paid him any attention, which he low key hated).
Not having him bark whenever I laughed a little too loudly because he thought someone had knocked on the door.
Back to the magpies.
Since the 1st April, I’ve been seeing solitary magpies.
Sorrow.
There has been the odd occasion where I’ve seen two kind of close together, but they’ve never both been in my eye line and so I’m only seeing one at a time.
So it’s one for sorrow.
That seems kind of right at the moment.
As time passes and the sadness morphs into a different shape the sorrow will morph along with it.
And then one day it will be two for joy again.
His name was Dennis by the way. But I rarely called him that. Mostly he was my Bubba.
Title Inspiration - This works twofold today, the title is Sondheim’s fault (fault is an aggressive word). It’s The Last Midnight which I have been thinking about a lot recently for reasons I do not know. I think it’s because if I possessed the ability to perform in any capacity, I would want to be the Witch to the surprise of no one that knows me personally. I struggled with the subtitle today though for obvious reasons but Dear Evan Hansen has still been on heavy rotation in my life and so Sincerely, Me provided
Such a tender piece, thank you for writing and sharing this ❤️ (I've recently lost my cat of 18 years and understand the whole wheel of feelings).
Sending you so much love. What a beautiful tribute to him. What a lucky dog he was to be so loved by you!