The French movie The Father of my Children follows a narrative anchored around a suicide. The film presents an authentic portrayal of family left to deal with an unexpected loss. There are tears, disbelief and regrets, the ubiquitous why questions are asked. Watching, I was grateful too for a story of loss scripted without dollops of unnecessary sentimentality.
I also appreciated the way the screening showed some aspects of grief, providing an empathetic depiction of times when emotions spiral. The on-screen portrayal of grief aligned well with my own experience, the disbelief, the numbed acceptance, wanting to put the world on hold but not pressing the pause button. Authentic.
Almost resolutely and despite overwhelming grief the world keeps turning, we continue.
What will be will be, and what is, is…even at the movies.
My mobile phone rang today
I answered
“Could I speak to Mottsu?” someone said
“No” was all I said
Someone introduced himself, from a vineyard in the Hunter Valley
A marketing call
“Mottsu died about 6 years ago” I said
“I am so sorry” someone said
“Thanks, you couldn’t have known” I said and then explained that Mottsu didn’t have a mobile phone and I could easily that we had signed mailing list with his name and my number – we had holidayed in the Hunter a year before he died.
More apologies, more consternation and more reassurances and we hung up.
I felt dull. The whole sequence was quite surreal and I couldn’t help remembering the time I had been shaken by the realisation he wouldn’t call me. I hadn’t imagined someone would call him.
Weird (especially given my musings in the previous post on remembering).
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. Mark Twain
I had to know more about the rats, remember the rats? They’re Norwegian it seems, interesting but of no consequence. Poor rats without hope, remind me of dear Mottsu, who was also bereft of hope. Here’s an article with the full (and horrible) detail of the drowned rats study.
A couple of compelling excerpts:
…whether they are restrained in the hand or confined in the swimming jar, the rats are in a situation against which they have no defense. This reaction of hopelessness is shown by some wild rats very soon after being grasped in the hand and prevented from moving; they seem literally to “give up.”
…after elimination of the hopelessness the rats do not die. This is achieved by repeatedly holding the rats briefly and then freeing them, and by immersing them in water for a few minutes on several occasions. In this way the rats quickly learn that the situation is not actually hopeless; thereafter they again become aggressive, try to escape, and show no signs of giving up.
Richter, C.P. On the Phenomenon of Sudden Death in Animals and Man. Psychosomatic Medicine Vol. XIX, no. 3, 1957
Hope can be learned, hedgehog.
Hope for me is holding someone’s hand.
Hold on to hope.
There’s a name for how we die, the manner, the ease. There’s even a global ranking for the quality of end of life care “quality of death“. I am reassured that there are many with a concern for how we die. There is a need to better support the dying through that transition.
Apparently few countries have palliative care strategies as part of their overall health care policies. The result, the report claims is “…is an incalculable surfeit of suffering, not just for those about to die but also for their loved ones.”
We’re born to die, that’s not all we’re born for, but it is our existential reality. I don’t know how to die, I’ll try to learn it even though conversations on the topic will be rare, and direct experience will be limited.
I hope to rage rage, even outrageously rage, while I can and then be allowed to die with peace, going gently into the night.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas 1951 (or 1952)
From the time Mottsu died, I began to dread the time Wally, his dog, would die. I wonder if others do that, after someone close to you dies and the mortality of all living things is reaffirmed, do you anticipate a further loss as unbearable? If that apprehension is a shared experience it isn’t one that has with shared with me, or by me until now.
I feared the loss of Wally would be a grief too great, not on it’s own but compounded with the already bewildering loss of Mottsu, a grief to great to navigate with a sound mind. That sounds a bit theatrical. I didn’t want to be melodramatic and when I voiced my fears my friends brushed me off.
“Wally won’t die…” they said “he is healthy” I was told.
My head and heart knew otherwise, Wally was healthy and even so he would die one day. He was already 10, and the vet referred to him as a ‘senior pet’. The denial of existential reality distressed me, kind though the intent of friends was. I felt demented by my fears when no-one else heard them, and everyone refused to validate them.
Walking with Wally and Shortbread in the park one-day I bumped into Bill, walking his dogs. Bill was a friend and colleague of Mottsu’s, it was always good to see him. Bill asked how I was and I told him about my anxiety, my dark concern about how I would bear Wally’s death.
Bill spoke with calm and authority, “Anne” he said “Wally will die one day and you will be sad, you’ll be OK”.
Wally did die, I was there with him. I miss that little dog and it comforts me to imagine him reunited with Mottsu. Not floating on clouds together or playing fetch but the spirit of one consoled by the essence of the other.
Do you think that’s possible?
I wrote about dogs yesterday and one of the stories is incomplete so I’ll say a little more about dogs, and the love of dogs as well as the loss of dogs.
I saw Mabel in the street recently, she was standing on the train tracks having crossed half way, she looked a little disoriented. This was the first time I had ever seen her unaccompanied by Max. I said hello, and asked where her dear old dog was.
Mabel told me she was looking for Max, he had run away. The fact that Max’s top speed was a lumbering walk, and he had probably not run for years, was a moot point as I empathised with her dismay at the loss of Max.
A truck rattled over the railway lines and Mabel turned to watch it travel down the road. “Was that barking ?” she said, “Max might be locked in that truck.” I hadn’t heard a bark. We talked about places where Max might be, I promised to keep a look out. Mabel imagined punishments to administer on his return, no biscuits for bad dogs.
We crossed the tracks and said farewells on the next corner.
I couldn’t help but recall the refrain “Don’t die Max, don’t die”; Mabel’s plaintive pleading with Max to stay with her, a few weeks earlier. It is a bitter sweet thought that Max couldn’t die in Mabel’s mind. It is heartbreaking too that she might still believe Max ran away, leaving her to walk alone.
Today I was thinking about the experience of losing a dog, the loss of Wally. The weather in my stomach changed – a deep churning. Even now. I also know a little of the agony of waiting for someone, who is not coming home, to come home. Max would not have chosen to leave Mabel to wait for him.
My friend’s little dog died today, he was hit by a car. She said ” … it was quick though, he’s so little. it’s so quiet in the house now.” Dr Frankfurt Longbody M.D. was “the bestest ever“.
I’m sad, I’m always saddened by the death of a dog, my friend is sadder still.
This post is a tribute to the dear pets we love and can’t bear to lose. We carry a heartfelt grief when our dear dogs die, not everybody understands that your dog is not just a dog. I remember reading an article about Peter Alexander, the pyjama guy, he described his adored dachshund, Penny, as “…my heart wrapped in fur”. That’s what it is like to own a dog for some of us.
There is a lady in my street, whose heart is wrapped in fur, she has a big old Golden Retriever, Max. They walk the streets together for hours each day. They don’t go fast and they don’t go far and I never see one without the other.
In the hot spell before this one, they were out along the local shopping strip. They weren’t walking. Max and his owner Mabel were on the footpath outside the corner convenience store. Max was sprawled across the path and Mabel knelt next to him.
“Don’t die Max, don’t die.” she said over and over again. It’s a haunting memory, I knew it was important that Max not die, not on that day, not yet.
Max did make it home that day, Frankie didn’t today.
