Squish Cat squashes the garbage down with his squasher-downer

It’s already been a week since Harley died and I can’t believe it. At the same time I can’t believe he’s gone at all.

In the space of two weeks we went from ‘how was he on your walk?” to saying goodbye. I was lucky though, I got to tell him goodbye twice. Seven days after I’d last seen him, I got to visit at the emergency vet. 

I patted his head as he lay on the floor (we’d tried to convince him to go back to his bed but you could never convince Harley to do anything he didn’t want to do) and I whispered goodbye to my friend, wishing him a safe journey to wherever he was going.

As we were leaving, he struggled to his feet as if to say “We’re going home? Great, I’ll come too.” No, you have to stay here, Lauren told him, but I promise you’ll get to come home soon. “You can fight this buddy,” I’d said. “Just keep fighting it and we’ll let you on the couch whenever you want.”

Squish Cat squashes the garbage down with his squasher-downer. I’d cried in my car before I went home and then refused to think about it for the rest of the day.

Monday morning; Lauren sent me a message. “We’re letting Harley go home at 11 today,” she said, “I know you’re in work, but letting you know in case you want to say goodbye.” Work was a hassle. There were a pile of emails that needed answering, lots of things that needed my attention, but I said I’d do my best. Maybe I could leave work early or maybe I could go at lunchtime. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “The vet is coming at 11 but Harley knows how much you love him.”

I re-read the message. She didn’t say they were letting him go home. They were letting him go at home. I sent my boss a message. I have to go. Call it mental health reasons but I have to leave right now and I’ll explain later.

It was pouring with rain, and the wind was driving it sideways. The zip is broken on my only raincoat so I stood on the train platform, trying hold it together, constantly looking at the electronic sign to see how long until the train, how long until I got to my saved maps location for Harley’s house.

When I arrived he was lying in his bed on the floor, covered in blankets, keeping warm next to the fire. How was this the same dog? I’d seen him just over a week before and we’d played our favourite game at the park. How had I not noticed he’d been losing weight or that there was something wrong when he went to the toilet. If I’d noticed these things months ago maybe we wouldn’t be here now.

I hadn’t really expected I’d see him again, but I knew there were no bargains to be made this time. Instead, I sat on the floor and stroked him and we all told him what a very good boy he was and how there would be so many rabbits to chase on the farm where he was going. We joked that the afterlife must be hell for rabbits, with all the good dogs chasing them. And Harley was such a good dog.

A kind, quiet vet came to the house. I felt bad for him; what an awful job to have. Then he mentioned how he had a border collie at home, and I felt bad for resenting him for it.

It didn’t take long for Harley to fall asleep, and I didn’t stay long afterwards. I’d said my goodbyes to him, and now he was gone I felt like I was intruding on a private scene.

The rain had stopped, and now it felt far too warm. I’d texted my boss to explain where I’d gone so suddenly and why and she understood. Then I went home. Squish Cat squashed the garbage down for the rest of the day.

This weekend felt a tiny bit like a betrayal to Harley, when I wasn't getting out of bed at 7 to walk him. I’d had my moments during the week, thinking about how my feet wouldn’t get wet when I walked him in the rain in the early morning, or when it occurred to me I have a whole pile of old t-shirts I mainly only wear for walking him. I took the blanket out of my car and washed it. We hadn’t gone to the beach in months yet, somehow, there was still sand in the car boot from that scruffy dog. Somehow he still managed to get it covered in hair but vacuuming it feels like too soon. 

I checked in on Lauren a couple of times during the week, but what was there to say? Keeping busy, helps with not thinking about it. On Saturday, I needed to drop something off and stopped by her house. I’d renamed the saved location. Harley doesn’t live there now. It felt unreal, pulling onto his driveway and not going to the back gate. There wasn’t a wet nose sticking through the slats in the gate or a good boy dancing round in circles with excitement, almost too happy to see me to let me in the gate.

On the way home, I drove past the park Harley and I often visited. It had been raining on our last visit, too, and sometimes I’d sheltered under trees as Harley ran about sniffing things. I’d pretended to chase him around, and he’d pretended to run away, looking back as he ran to check we were still playing and I was still going “roaarr” and holding up my arms. 

That morning, as we’d walked down the hill to the park, a lady had been sitting on her front porch and she commented on the good dog was getting a walk; maybe it was to herself or maybe it was to a partner I didn’t see. I wonder now if people will notice. Will the owner of the chocolate lab we’d occasionally meet one day think how he never sees us anymore? 

Did the owner of the mean german shepherd we’d started avoiding ever notice we'd stopped going there? We switched visiting to Sundays so we wouldn't meet. Did he ever wonder if we were avoiding them, or if we'd found a better park? Somewhere with coffee.

And I sometimes wonder if the hurt is worth it at all. The happy memories just hurt now and my phone is full of photos of a happy dog that’s not here. And it reminds me of all the other friends I’ve lost and will lose. 

I remember being a kid and waking up in the night in tears, crying my heart out until someone came to see me. They would blearily ask what was wrong, thinking I was in pain. Through my sobs, I’d tell them the cats were dead. I think by this time they had been for months, maybe years, who knows. I don't know how old I was. My Dad or whoever would answer me angrily and go back to bed.

My cats don’t understand why I’ve been extra clingy, and I don’t know if they'll notice that now I don’t come home on weekend mornings smelling like I’ve been patting dogs.

I woke up at 5am today and remembered Harley has been gone a week already and it doesn’t seem possible. I couldn’t get back to sleep after that.

The flashpoint

In The Flash, I was deeply affected by the Flashpoint storyline -- where Barry Allen travels back in time to stop his Mum from being murdered. He returns to an altered present where he's living a contented, ordinary life with both parents.

He'd give up his superpowers and being a hero just to be able to live a quiet, normal life with his parents.

***

Recently, I've been having dreams about my parents. Ordinary, normal, domestic scenes – there are no flying whales on your wedding day, your cat isn't the pope, I couldn't even tell you what does happen in the dreams. What makes them memorable is my folks are about 20 years younger.

My Dad doesn't have dementia, he can walk and move about all on his own, Mum isn't frail and worn-out and white-haired from being his full-time carer.
Nothing prepares you for seeing your parents get old. Even getting old yourself, the most unexpected thing to happen to a person, is less confronting than watching my parents declining health with their advancing years.

Dad got food poisoning one day. You'd think such a day would live in infamy, but I don't even remember how long ago it was. I think 13 years ago. He was out for dinner with his Rotary club, like any other 'dinner meeting', and several of them got food poisoning. The usual story, bad hygiene practices. One of his friends got so dehydrated from being sick he ended up in hospital.

For Dad, what happened was he wasn't keeping anything in his stomach long enough to digest it, and his various drugs stopped being absorbed. His blood pressure went up. He had a stroke. In many ways, I lost him that day. He's not been the same since, though other minor strokes have followed in the intervening years.

His personality changed from then, he stopped working or volunteering in the community. Even what he liked reading changed. The man I knew and loved as my Dad changed, and his decline has been heartbreaking.

***

He was hospitalised after another stroke at Easter last year. We were camping in the outback splendour of Karijini National Park and in a brief moment of mobile signal, I got a message from my brother. Mum, as usual, hadn't wanted to worry me, hadn't wanted to spoil my trip. Dad was fine, she said.

Despite a global pandemic, I investigated if I could get permission to visit. Who did I need to ask to grant me permission to leave Australia, and would I be allowed to return? Maybe I could have got it, had I ever been able to get a simple letter from my Dad's GP outlining his health condition and why it was important for me to visit then, not later. Whether anyone ever asked his GP for that letter, I don't know, and I'll never know if I would have been granted that permission.

Just over a year later, with national and state borders open (and more active Covid cases than we'd ever seen) I got to make that visit. I hadn't been back since 2019 and I felt acutely aware that every month passing without seeing my Dad was a gamble. This week was meant to be the first day after the end of a temporary work contract; the contract got extended but I went anyway. You can push your luck too far.

***

These days, Dad is now mostly confined to his armchair. He can walk short distances with a walker but says he'll fall if he goes too far. The result is he can make it to the bathroom on his own, and most of the time he makes it there in time. He watches TV, constantly changing channels, unable to read what the on-screen TV guide says. He turns it off and commands Alexa to play the radio. He changes stations. He tells Alexa to read to him from Sherlock Holmes. He turns the volume up. He cycles between these things all day, barely giving any long enough to hold his interest.

The hardest thing of all is he has no filter. He tells me honestly how he's afraid to die, that he wakes up early in the morning and lying there, unable to fall back asleep, he worries about death. What it will feel like to die. How horrible it will be for my Mum to find him. 

I try and reassure him, you've a long way to go yet, you'll live to be 100! You'll get letters from the Queen!  He whines; I don't want to be 100. I don't know what to tell him. Occasionally, he holds my hand, tells me he's proud of me. If I don't see you again, I want you to know... or if I don't make it... 

I tell him there's something I need to go do. I'm 41 years old and I'm crying in my bedroom alone.

***

One day when we're out, he seems to have some kind of attack. We're telling him it's time to go home, but he's just staring. He's awake, but he's not responding, not moving. We're talking to him, asking if he's ok, asking if he can hear us. One hand is gripping the table. He starts to drool. I think to myself, is this it? Is this when I lose him? 

After what is probably seconds but feels like an hour, he comes back. He can't walk, but we have his wheelchair. Soon he's himself again. What passes for himself when he's a hollow shell of the man who used to be my Dad.

It's called a TIA, a transient ischaemic attack. A minor stroke with symptoms that resolve within hours to a day. Nobody else in the family seems all that alarmed, he's had them before, he's already on all the medication he can be, the hospital can't do anything. But it's a warning, and a reminder that I could lose him any day.

We're going back at Christmas, for a proper visit. I only hope that I don't have go back for his funeral before then.