The End of the Line

Pickle first had cancer at two years old, a hard lump that ulcerated as soon as the vet’s needle touched it. It was a mast cell tumour; nothing much on the outside, malignant as hell on the inside. It was a vicious op – the wide margin of tissue they needed to cut away meant her skin was stretched as tight as a drum around her back, with thick steel stitches holding it all together at her chest.

That night was the first and last time I ever heard her cry.

‘Keep her lead-walked for a fortnight; she’ll want to rest,’ said the nurse as Kate and I arrived to pick her up.

Two days later she slipped her collar on a walk and went hunting in the woods for an hour and a half. Impossible, impossible beast.

Less than a year later Pickle developed a limp. I took her to see the vet, Joshua, a brilliant man with a look of mild exasperation etched permanently on his forehead. I guess I would too, were I to spend my days listening to people with too much money asking whether Chianti the bichon frise needs her teeth whitening or Sally the Burmese needs leg warmers now the nights are drawing in.

Joshua felt round Pickle’s back legs. Pickle endured it as per because she had already eyed up her prize – a jar of treats on the side cabinet. He then asked me to take her for a walk up and down the street so he could examine her gait. We pounded the pavement. Nothing. Much as I tried to get her to limp she seemed sound again – until the fourth lap, when her back left started failing again.

Josh:	Ah, I see it. It’s probably a strain.
Me:	But what if it isn’t?
Josh:	[a pause, then that exasperated face] It is probably a strain.
Me:	Shouldn’t she have an X-ray?
Josh:	I don’t think that’s necessary. Take her home and keep an eye on her. And then, if it persists and you’re worried, bring her back and we can look into getting some diagnostic work done.
Me:	I am. I am worried. I’m already worried …

There is a loud crash from inside the surgery. Pickle has finally claimed her biscuits. Joshua says nothing but raises his eyes to the heavens.

For the next two weeks I watched Pickle like a hawk. The limp would come and go, but it seemed to increase in severity each time. I phoned Mum. That was the worst thing I could have done.

Me:

I’ve looked in the medical encyclopedia. It could be rickets. And … and do dogs get deep vein thrombosis?

After a month I returned to the surgery. A new jar of treats sat on the side.

Me:	Josh, it’s got worse.
Josh:	Really? OK, well, let’s have a look at her.

Pickle once again endured an examination and the endless walking outside. Nothing. In the end Josh agreed to perform an X-ray. I arrived at 4 p.m. to pick her up.

Me:	How is she? What did it show?
Josh:	It was inconclusive.
Me:	What does that mean?
Josh:	It could be a repetitive strain or cartilage issues or something not showing up on the slides. Just try not to worry.
Lindsay the nurse:	She’ll be very tired. Just lead-walk her for a few days.

There is a loud crash from inside the consulting room. Pickle, high on meds, has just found the new jar of treats.

Two weeks later and I was frantic. I headed back to the surgery.

Me:	[wailing] What else can we do?
Josh:	[by now a broken man] Well, there is a specific orthopaedic hospital near Bedford, but I really don’t think–
Me:	Yes! Let’s do that!

And so I drove Pickle to Hertfordshire for further examination. The team there kept her in overnight for observation (£400), and the next day she was taken, in a private human ambulance (£250), for an MRI at the neighbouring hospital (£400). After another overnight stay (£400) I picked her up and waited for Joshua to get the results. I was terrified. Finally, I got the call.

Josh:	OK, so I’ve got the results of all the MRIs and bone scans. And –
Me:	Oh God.
Josh:	I don’t know how to say this …
Me:	Oh God.
Josh:	There’s –
Me:	What?
Josh:	There’s –
Me:	I can’t live without her!
Josh:	There’s nothing wrong with her.
Me:	Sorry?
Josh:	Nothing. Not a thing.
Me:	I don’t understand.
Josh:	I’ve reviewed everything and spoken to my colleagues at the hospital, and … well, the truth is –
Me:	Oh no …
Josh:	She’s doing it for attention.
Me:	What?
Josh:	She wants your attention. That’s why she’s doing it.
Me:	You mean … you mean she’s putting it on?
Josh:	Yes.
Me:	You’re telling me I’ve got a dog with Munchausen’s?
Josh:	Yes, if you put it like that.
Me:	Three THOUSAND pounds, and she just wants my attention?
Josh:	Yes.

There is a pause. In the background a fully operational Pickle is desperately launching herself in the direction of the treats jar. I march over to her until I loom large.

Me:

You want my attention do you, little Pickle?

She sneezes on my foot, then looks up.

Me:

WELL YOU’VE GOT IT NOW.

We didn’t make it, Kate and I. Not in the end. My schedule, my stupidity, my thoughtlessness made an ex of her. We could have got through it. She could be sitting here as I write, shaking her tousled head at my silly puns and childish efforts to make you love me, but that’s hindsight for you. I made the worst mistake of my life. And then she made the worst of hers. You see, it turns out that my capacity for total self-destruction was matched only by her own – compatible to the last.

We didn’t speak for a while and got on with our lives, meeting new people and forging new paths. Her absence became the right side of bearable. Just. When Pickle was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year, I sat at my computer and emailed her. She had the right to say goodbye. I asked her if she would like to be there at the end. She replied that yes, she would.

And so we met on the Heath and walked together – all of us. Then we went back to my flat to prepare for the unthinkable.**

When Joshua had left with Pickle’s body and all had fallen quiet, Kate and I sat beside one another on the sofa. We drank tumblers of whisky, hands shaking, in total shock that we’d just killed our little girl – that we had just lost part of our family. As we talked, I could feel our ties weakening, one by one, and realized that soon I would have nothing left to moor me to her. I would just be cast adrift on an ocean of memory and regret.

After a while Kate got up to leave, and I joined her, with Parker ambling behind, seemingly untroubled by the loss and in dire need of a piss. She walked round the block with me, arm linked in mine, the years forgotten.

Then she got in her car and left.

It turns out that I had been in SUCH shock during the euthanasia procedure that I had forgotten to fill out the requisite paperwork. So when I phoned the surgery a few weeks later to pick up Pickle’s ashes there was a slightly awkward encounter with the receptionist.

Me:	Hi. I’m just ringing to see when I can pick up my dog.
Woman:	Ah. OK.
Me:	Is there a problem?
Woman:	Well … she’s still with us.
Me:	What do you mean – still with you?

An uncomfortable pause.

Woman:

We’ve been … waiting on your instructions.

Finally, it dawned on me. She was in their fridge-freezer. She’d been in it for six weeks. I thought I’d sorted the cremation out but in reality hadn’t handed over the correct forms or money or anything. I felt awful, truly awful, though I was momentarily cheered by a friend reminding me that Pickle had spent the majority of her life trying to get into fridges, and therefore it was fitting, in death, that she had finally got her wish.

I didn’t pick up Pickle until 10 March, a warm spring day. The waiting room was empty. I had a lump in my throat, but tried to style it out and pass it off as typhoid.

It was the weight that got me – the sheer weight. I don’t know. I thought that the ashes would be light, like grey candyfloss, that I would take the bag and swing it into the air, and she and I would go walking into the fresh spring morning together, united once more. No one tells you how heavy the urn is going to be or how much dust you’ll have to spread. No one tells you how to deal with someone handing you something you adored in a carrier bag in front of a waiting room full of hacking cats and three-legged dogs. It’s hard to be nonchalant in that situation. It’s hard to pretend that being handed a plastic sack full of something you love is an everyday occurrence.

The urn weighed one kilogram. The exact weight of loss.

I’d like to say that we sprinkled the ashes together, Kate and I, in the fields of Cornwall a few months later – that our eyes locked in that moment, as the wind took the hard grey dust and spirited it away into the sky. And that all the pain of those awful yesterdays went with it, blown to nothing, leaving only the purest concentrate of love behind.

Wouldn’t that have been wonderful? A perfect, full circle, the sort of thing writers write about.

And I guess I am a writer now, and I could write that – I could write the perfect ending. I’d love to, you know. More than anything, I’d love to.

But it didn’t happen. Why would it? Life doesn’t give you the neatly tied ends of a romcom. The world would be insufferably saccharine if it did, plus we’re so contrary as a species, we’d only sit around longing for the tragedy and agony of unrequited love.

And yet, in all the loss, something of the family remains – Parker, our arthritic darling, now with blue discs for eyes and pegs for legs – and my beloved Heath, which holds the memories of yesterday in its boughs and meadows.

This is the tree where you first kissed me. Sometimes it is full of leaf and fills the sky, sometimes it is thin and stark, like it is now. This is the tumulus where we cried that final time. Here is the path where you first held my hand. Here is the wood we made our own. Here are the secret short cuts, the magnolia with one flower, the mournful benches, the familiar pooches. Here they all are.

We occasionally bump into each other, never arranged, always haphazard. And we walk a little, until our paths home diverge. Look at the emotional palindrome we have become.

And my feet marching this ground, day after day, tell the tale of

You and I, you and I, you and I, and trees and sky and always and for ever but

Gone.