Marmaduke, our family dog of close to fifteen years, has just passed on. It had been coming for a while, but that didn’t make the decision any easier. Last year I helped a retired CEO of a major dog charity to write a book about her time there, and the chapter on making the most important decision of all had been at the forefront of my mind for some time as I watched Marmie decline. Better too soon than too late, is the golden rule. It’s a huge decision, and I didn’t want to have to make it. But even more than that, I didn’t want to get it wrong for him. I didn’t want him to be in constant pain that was going only one way.
The vet who came to our home was such a kind and gentle man, and it was as peaceful as it could be. I fed Marmaduke pieces of cheese while he was sedated, and then it seemed like he knew nothing further. Later, he was collected by a specialist pet crematorium and taken away in a dog bed, all tucked up under a blanket with his little head on a pale blue satin pillow. He would not have tolerated that in life, but in death, it looked perfect. His ashes are going to be returned to us in due course by DPD. (Frighteningly modern. I look forward to my own DPD journey in years to come.)
If I get to 106 years old, don’t really recognise anyone, can’t see or hear, can’t really manage steps and just about the only thing working about me is my nose, I think I would want this quiet and gentle end. And I know that death will come to us all.
But still the house is too quiet and I’ve no one to share my morning apple with, and writing this at my desk, there is no one curled up nearby, snoring. I hear him tiptoeing round the house and think ‘ah, he needs to go out’ before I remember that he isn’t here. Yesterday I boiled him an egg for breakfast. (He loved egg. In fact, he just loved all human food.) There’s a yawning gap in every room where his beds were. Most of my passwords are based on a version of his name and we named our family house after him. He isn’t here, but he still sort of is.
It was a life well lived. He loved us all, acted as if he was my husband, (my human husband took this in his stride), took sides in family arguments, and had exceptional eyebrow activity to express his emotions, as well as a definitive snort for extreme disapproval.
If Marmie had written a memoir, what would it have said about the loving but sometimes chaotic family he was parachuted into? Which brings me to the question, why don’t pets get memoirs? Perhaps they should. Perhaps I’ll write his. Or his biography, at least. He deserves it, the way he lived, with extraordinary character and love and judgement. Key qualities of kindness and stubbornness.
I’ll keep you posted.
