Grab Every Morsel

life lessons from the dying

When my first dog died I lay down on the floor with her. She raised her head and gave the most pitiful whine. A cry for mercy. As the vet took away her pain, I buried my face in her fur and howled. It was smelly and messy. I did not care. I embraced it all. I refused the offer of cremation. I took her body home and dug a deep grave and howled some more. I got into the hole and scooped out earth and stone with my bare hands. I didn’t want to cover her body. I wanted to lie down next to it again.

Kenna on her last day

I had lain next to my father only months before as he waited for release. That experience was a lot cleaner. A lot quieter. I did not howl. I whispered and I sang. I stroked his morphine-smoothed brow and told him it was OK, he could let go now. It was beautiful. It was peaceful. I walked away and never saw his body again. He was cremated and I scattered his ashes in the river.

When my dog died I was having psychotherapy to help with my grief for dad. I went to my therapist that week in more distress than I had been during any preceding session. I told her I thought I might be going mad. ‘I never cried like this for Dad.’ She listened, nodded, then said, ‘Dogs are sent to show us how to live.’ It was a relief to be taken seriously. We talked about how dogs know all about mindfulness. Obvious really. They live only in the present moment. They know all about grabbing each minute of pleasure; they know about how to show pain, too, how to show anger when it’s needed, but how to forget it the instant it’s not.

In talking this through I realised how much my dad was like my dog. He loved his life, wringing enjoyment out of every moment. He loved work and play in equal measure. He loved food. When he came out of hospital he gave me instructions on how to cook his favourite meal - chicken cacciatore. He loved physical affection. I knew he would expect nothing less than for me and my sister to lie down next to him, holding him as he died, in the same way he lay next to us and read to us at the end of the day when we were small. He loved being outside, on the river especially. Even after he had had his leg amputated he talked about getting back in his canoe. He didn’t bear grudges. His anger was white-hot, short-lived and righteous. We knew something had to be very bad for him to explode with rage, but we were always forgiven, quickly and completely. He loved his friends and family, organising a party to say goodbye to everyone in celebration of his life. At his wake I found myself looking for him. He would have loved to have been there.

Me with Dad after his amputation

Dad taught me how to live. How to die. His dignity and honesty during his decline and death were life-changing for me to witness.

So of course he was very much on my mind when my cat Jet was dying last week. On her last relatively good day I gave her tinned sardines. She inhaled them, her trademark jet-engine purr louder than ever. The next day she didn’t want the sardines. She looked at me as she stood on wobbly legs by her bowl. I knew what that meant. My dog had given me a similar look on her last day. ‘I can’t do this any more. I’ve had enough.’

I took Jet on to my lap and she slept, still purring, while I waited for the vet to call me back. It was messy and smelly again, as it had been with my dog. In the car, as we turned into the vet’s road, she woke, raised her head and looked straight at me again. Her eyes, always so bright and yellow with the widest black pupils, were now a dull orangey-green, the pupils reduced to narrow slits. She miaowled. Half mew, half howl. It was a pitiful plea, that last utterance.

I ticked the box on the form that said I would be responsible for her body before the vet had finished asking me what I wanted to do. I took her home, dug the grave, put her in it, covered her, weeping.

Grab it all

That night I was listening to a podcast with the actor Richard E Grant. After a long chat about his late wife, Joan Washington, to whom he was devoted for 38 years, he was asked, ‘What’s life taught you?’ He answered, ‘Oh… that it’s there for the taking. Grab every morsel and crumb that you can.’

It’s what Dad would say. Jet, too. As long as that morsel is tinned sardines.