Ebb and flow...

... for Knots in the String.

I’m surprised I’m posting because like a tide, our emotions have constantly ebbed and flowed. We would breathe a little easier and then the tide would turn, as it does. One step forward, two steps back.

We realise that our city Matchbox house was purchased with the Terrier in my mind. We wanted a private little garden for him, and if the Body Corporate hadn’t agreed that we could have our dog with us, the sale would not have gone through. Nine years in the city Matchbox has only ever been with the Terrier who was four when we took possession of the house, and thus his presence is everywhere. Everywhere we look we expect to see his face, but it’s gone. It’s been unbearably tough, and we have longed to get back to the coast.

The coast is the same but different, he is everywhere for sure, because we live there far more than the city, but because the garden is large and the beach and ocean still larger, and with Nature in its vast scope surrounding us on all sides, the loss is less caustic. It’s odd. One would think the loss would rub like sandpaper.

I can’t speak for my husband but every day I wake, realise I have no hairy little friend and for one second, I just want to turn my back on the world. But then I recall that the Terrier took each day as a gift filled with limitless possibilities and so I try to honour the lesson he spent 13 years teaching me.

And so to doing:

Grief is a dichotomous beast. Sometimes so ugly, so cruel. But then like Janus, it flips its mask and becomes soft, gentle, leading us by the hand, so that we feel it’s best to trust it and make friends with it. Better than fighting because it’s a fight one can never win.

Thus we cry at the strangest times. I sleep with the Terrier’s polar fleece technicolour dreamcoat rolled against me like a teddy bear. We have days of firsts. First walk up the steps without him to greet us at the top. First big walks without him finding smells and shells. First cake-making without him waiting for some of the batter. First trip back and forth in the ute and so forth…

In the city, I find I can’t put his various beds away, or his basket of toys. The house looks too empty. But I wash all his towels and snuggle rugs and they’re folded and stored. We return meds to the vet to be disposed of and go through his many possessions to see what we might keep in case of a future dog. The boatshed on the coast is a store-room for anything canine – beds, crates, leads, harnesses, toys, bowls, coats and towels.

I can’t believe the power of his passing. We’ve lost seven Jack Russells in 48 years and this loss, this fabulously good/naughty little dog who made us belly laugh and then almost scream with frustration, knocks us both into the back of next week.

On my first beach walk without him, I actually talk to him. And then I turn and face the ocean and howl the F-word at the waves and weep. Anyone watching this strange woman would wonder, I’m sure.

I spend time on gentle things: stitching hearts for the Animal Emergency Service to give to folk like us who might be grieving a lost loved pet.

Time in a bookshop – buying the Little Book of Hygge, marking Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, (One and Two) for future consumption. Likewise The Book of Ikigai – titles that can cosset me through the next however-long. We watch episodes of Series 5 of All Creatures Great and Small and I cry at the theme music. We watch Poirot and Fisk because they demand little and then we begin to work our way through all the episodes of Bluey. One where Chilly tells Bluey that sometimes friends pass through our lives quite swiftly in the scheme of things…

I attend ballet rehearsals and wonder if I have the heart to dance my bit. I’m sad and vulnerable. But I feel immense guilt if I let my team down by taking off to the coast and not joining them on stage.

We realise as we pack the car to head to Longford Blooms, the garden festival in the north of our island, that our hairy dog-child travelled with us on most of our times away. We always tried to find an AirB n’B that was dog friendly. In addition, he came with us on all of our picnics and how strange it feels not to pack a picnic for him as we head north. We know we can be gone from either house for a period of time now, and that he’s not left alone. Spotify has no reason to play its calming doglists.

I have become a thief. Sort of. If there are pretty roses dangling over fences into our public lanes, I’ll snip off a flower for a vase. I’m also eating too much that is sweet. Food is generally tasteless, and I can’t be bothered much so thank heaven for the gift of Haigh’s chocolates from our son and his wife. Thank you too to our daughter who sends us a daily digital flower with a supportive message from her heart. She lost her kelpie, The Terrier’s best friend, a few years ago, so she knows how we feel.

My husband and I are not the sort who must wait a statutory time before we even think another dog might be able to slip into our house. We are a dog house, a dog family, and so we research and find out as much as we can about available Jack Russells. A new dog will never replace The Terrier. His full kennel name is so big, his legacy so infinite, it would be impossible. No, a new member of our family will take their own place and be loved alongside, not in place of. They will create their own history, and we’ll be their friend, their mentor and their parent. And so we find who might have dogs and who hasn’t.

But… we have collected our beautiful boy’s ashes and until we have the most perfect dawn or dusk day suited to a little Viking funeral on his favourite beach, we won’t leave him alone. He will be with us in the car or wherever. Yes, grief is the strangest beast. I’ve learned much losing family, friends and previous dogs. There is no right or wrong way. One just goes with the ebb and flow; whatever feels right is right. Thus if I become a slightly mad woman on the beaches or if I sleep with a little dog coat rolled into my side, so be it. Judge me if you want, it is what it is for the foreseeable.

But in his own inimitable way, The Terrier has immortalised himself. Apart from frequently being a cast member of Knots in the String, he was the inspiration for Blighty in Passage and he graces the cover. Even if the paper novel goes Out of Print, it matters little because as an e-book it floats in the Kindle e-world in perpetuity. Clever, famous little chap…

PS: Thank you to everyone who has sent us kind messages on Instagram, or via email and Facebook. We are blessed to have those who care in our lives, and it has made the journey more bearable. Next week we’ll be back to comms on and having a lovely chat but for this week and for this column which I doubted I would post, it’s comms-off again. Apologies.

Song for this week?