Oliver was more solid. Still, with a heart as hard a pudding, he teared up from time to time and fought it away. Xander came over later in the day and took him out for a pint while Lucy and I bawled softly in the kitchen. Duncan had been a part of their lives, too, and his passing hit them as well as their children. When Nigel, Natalie, and the twins arrived with them it was a whole new round of tears.
It’s funny how animals become a part of your life, real and true as if they were your own flesh and blood. Oliver had gotten me that dog as a replacement for a child we’d lost. Even though we knew full well that he could never really take the place of our Cara, he’d filled a spot that needed filling and he’d helped us both to heal in ways that maybe we wouldn’t have as completely without him. We’d loved that dog as our child, given him the same attention and care that we had all of them. It seemed so unfair that we’d all outlive him, somehow strangely unnatural, even though we knew all along that we’d lose him sooner or later. It tore us apart at the gut, though. It wasn’t much different than it would have been if someone had come along and yanked a baby from our arms. We’d felt that before.
“He was a brave little bloke,” Gryffin sniffed. He was nine years old, his cheeks were splotched as he rested his head on Oliver’s shoulder, “He was about as tall as the cabbages and he’d go chasing deer out of the birdfeeders.”
“Yeah,” Xander smiled, “Barking his brains loose while those wee little stumps he had for legs were just going and going. Imagine if he’d ever got one! Poor, brave ole li’el Dunky-doo.” He shook his head and continued. He spoke loudly as if he were reading from a book, “Fearless Dunkers, defender of bird feeders and mighty conqueror of various dinner scraps! Lord of the Food Bowl and Champion of the Water Dish…” It took me a second to realise he was being funny. “Blimey, he was so old he smelled dead a year ago!”
“He was older than that,” Oliver agreed, “And he did smell of rotten potatoes at the end.”
“’e was older dan God’s granddad!” Gryffin replied with a grin, though his eyes were still red and watery, “That li’el ole Hunky Dunky-doo!” He dropped the accent, “We were lucky to have him for so long. We really were. He actually died six years ago. If he hadn’t swallowed that battery when he ate the pink rabbit…”
“Now that’s a lad,” Oliver smiled and messed his son’s hair.
We all sat together for a while on the stoop. None of us had any inclination to eat supper.
We eventually recovered from the loss of our beloved Duncan. A few weeks later Oliver asked us if we’d like to have another pet, since all we had left were two cats and the spotted grey and white goat, Tangwystl.
“I just don’t want another dog,” I told him later in private, “Right now I want to hold on to Duncan. I don’t have the strength to love anybody new right now. It takes too much courage to love somebody. I’m just not brave enough to lose them. When I’m feeling brave, we can get another dog, but, please, Ollie, I just can‘t take it just yet…”
“Silvia,” He pulled me close, “Please don’t cry anymore. I hate it when you cry. It’s OK. We don’t have to get another dog. Not ever if you don’t want one. And I think you are very brave. You’re very brave to take the time to understand how you feel and you’re brave to say it.”
“I’m being selfish.”
“Shush. You’re the least selfish person I know. You’re being honest. Oy, come on,” he tilted my head back and smiled at me, “Stop it! Stop crying! It‘s OK. I miss him, too. We all miss him. Getting another dog isn‘t going to bring him back, yeah? And you‘re the one going to take care of a new one, so if you‘re not ready, it‘s really us being selfish wanting to drag a new one in. Shush now, Love, and let‘s go eat something sweet. Sugar fixes everything.”
It took me months to get over losing my dog. I missed him as much as I’d missed any person who’d been a part of my every day, especially the ones who I knew would never be coming back. Sometimes I’d hear his bark on the winds. Once or twice the little square we cut in the door for him to come in and out of swung as if he’d passed through it, but there was nothing there. A few times I felt him brush against my leg as I made dinner. Was it his spirit telling me he wasn’t as far away as I feared or was it just my mind trying to comfort me? I wondered, but I was still thankful for the times when it would happen. Faith, Oliver had told me long ago, was believing that something magical could happen at any moment of the day. So I believed.
Years after Duncan left us and Nigel, Caro and Nattie had begun their lives, I helped my youngest son, Warren, to pack his bags. He was heading off to study composition at the London School of Music. My youngest, my baby, was standing before me, tall and strong with his hair a mess on the top of his head, shoving the last of his blue jeans into a cardboard box.
You’d think that after having sent the others off I’d have been comfortable letting Ren go without too many words or tears, but I wasn’t. I watched him, remembering the clumsy toddler who used to pull on my skirts. I could still see that little boy lost somewhere in his lean face. He looked like Oliver. Even his hands were like his fathers, long and slender as he clicked shut his computer and slipped it into a case.
I excused myself quietly from his room and went outside where I wandered into the wood and sobbed alone for about an hour. I took another fifteen minutes after I stopped to gather myself and cool down, hoping when I returned I was not bright red. I knew I would be. Damned pale skin always gave me away, especially when I didn’t want it to.
When I came back into the garden, Annie and Bess were there with Warren, the three of them standing in the middle of the yard with some mates, laughing loudly and talking excitedly about heading off for university. I stood back and I watched them, while that lump kept returning to my chest. I remembered the days the three of them were born. Annie, now beautiful and animated in the mid-day sun, who struggled to breathe at her birth. Little Bess, who came into the world fighting and had never cowered from battle once since. And Warren, our Little Renny, who now towered above everyone and commanded the scene with his very presence.
How proud I was of them. Every one of them. And how much my heart bled that they were old enough to leave me. Where had all the time gone? When had this happened? When had they gotten so big, so strong, so independent? And what on Earth was I going to do once they were gone?
Off they went, opened their wings and flew away. Bess went to study anthropology in Cardiff. She lived at home for a few months and then got a flat with a couple of her schoolmates. She came and went as she always had, showing up mostly for suppers and holidays with loads of stories to tell us all. She was always travelling somewhere or doing something exciting, like going to Easter Island for six weeks to aid on an archaeological study.
“It’s such a big, beautiful, fascinating world out there, Auntie Silvia,” She told me once over a quick lunch in London, “I want to go everywhere and see everything! I wish Annie would go with me sometimes, but her feet are glued here in Britain.”
“Do you miss her?” I asked, remembering how many years the two of them had spent fighting like cats in a bag.
“Terribly.” Tears sprang into her eyes, “I love my life, you know? I love to travel, but sometimes I just want to go home. Annie is my home and she’s usually so far away. It’s hard…”