Everybody Died, So I Got a Dog

by Emily Dean

  But I was struggling to process the losses. I fell over at work one day with dizzy spells, and a colleague took me to A&E. Hospitals in the London area were becoming my Mastermind specialist subject. The doctors explained that it was actually a cocktail of low blood pressure, anxiety and stress. I was slightly embarrassed that it was simply my mental state that had caused this dramatic overnight stay in hospital.

  ‘This isn’t what he signed up for, is it,’ I laughed to one of my boyfriend’s female friends when we had dinner with her a week later. ‘We should still be at the cocktails and romance stage!’

  I arranged a birthday dinner with my friends to acknowledge all the support they’d shown me. My boyfriend stood up to list the reasons he loved me, and I felt as if I was leaving bear country and finally entering dog world, at long last.

  ‘I’m so happy to see you in sunshine after all that cloud,’ Frank texted me the following day.

  ‘It was the birthday I always dreamed of having but never thought I would!’ I replied.

  A few weeks later, in a denouement I hadn’t seen coming, my boyfriend suddenly ended our relationship. He wrote in his email that it was nothing I had done. His life just didn’t accommodate a partner right now. He offered to meet up to say our final goodbyes in person but my friends adamantly advised against a post-mortem, suggesting it was like an alcoholic popping into the off-licence for one last browse.

  Over the following few weeks and months my ex sent texts. He hoped we could still stay civil and remain friends. But I decided to stay clean and resist that one harmless beer, aware of the hangover on the other side.

  ‘I feel guilty sometimes, like a bad person for cutting off contact,’ I told Sue.

  ‘But you’re healing, and acting authentically. Contacting someone just to seem likeable – that would be dishonest.’

  ‘It will make people think that I’m unreasonable, the bad ex.’

  ‘But you know the truth. So do all the people that care about you. Is it important what outsiders think?’

  ‘Sometimes I think that’s all I am. Other people’s opinions of me.’

  ‘And the people you are drawn to as friends, the Franks, let’s say. Do they care what people think of them? Do they want to be liked and seen as nice?’

  ‘No. I’m almost in awe of that kind of honesty. But Frank told me once it’s a harder way to live.’

  ‘It is. But once you start you can’t really ever go back. Boundaries and self-care don’t make you a bad person.’

  Once the pain of romantic disappointment began to recede, my old pal ‘complicated grief’ returned to my life, and this time it was a houseguest who had come armed with a list of squatters’ rights. Grief can be really annoying like that, a bad date who just won’t get the hint.

  Frank put this blast of fresh pain down to having had ‘a painkiller, something good to think about when everything else seemed bleak. And then it suddenly got withdrawn. Leaving you with all the original bereavement plus cold turkey. That’s double tough.’ He signed off his email, ‘Right. That’ll be nine guineas, please.’

  He was right, as he so often was (with the exception of that time he decided to get a gold tooth). Perhaps I had simply traded being a sister and a daughter for being a girlfriend. And now I was worried about feeling like nobody again.

  Sue helped me to make sense of it all but I felt I needed some other kind of help as well. I went to my doctor and told her I thought I needed anti-depressants for a bit. ‘I am having therapy but this feeling … It’s out of control. Like the past couple of years have taken their toll.’

  She turned away suddenly from the constant keyboard-tapping that characterises modern GP visits and looked at me with concern. ‘You’ve had multiple losses. Of course you feel out of control.’

  She agreed to prescribe me some low-dose anti-depressants. ‘Kind of like faking it till I make it, I guess,’ I suggested.

  ‘Absolutely, she said. ‘And then we’ll review it. I think you’re going to be okay, you know. Asking for help is a good sign.’

  A few weeks later I went to Highgate Cemetery to finalise arrangements for my mum’s grave plot, just a couple of tree-lined paths away from Rach’s limestone monument. My ex-boyfriend had helped me pick out the spot. It was in a little shaded area filled mainly with children’s memorials and the grave of the actor, Bob Hoskins. That seemed right for her.

  Highgate Cemetery felt a bit like an afterlife private members’ club. It was filled with artsy names and you needed a membership card to gain entry. I was on first-name terms with the gravedigger by then (whose job title must be due for a modern upgrade to ‘post-life consultant’) and he pointed out well-loved regulars. ‘Lucian Freud over there. George Michael’s mother. We get them all!’

  The cemetery administrator greeted me cheerily and handed me the grave paperwork to look over. I realised that my ex-boyfriend’s name was still alongside mine as joint life-custodian of the plot. ‘Actually … it’s just me now,’ I said.

  He paused briefly, pen poised in mid-air, without looking up, before amending it diplomatically. ‘There we go! All ready,’ he said brightly. ‘Super spot you’ve chosen for Mum.’

  My friends swaddled me in protective concern. They got me through the days, as did the welcome dose of my new pal Sertraline and the distraction of office life. But a grimy Instagram filter had settled on my worldview, washing out all vividness. It just wouldn’t shift.

  I was over at the girls’ a few days later, for Mimi’s birthday. Bertie was playing with her Frozen jigsaw, Mimi was checking her Snapchat messages. Giggle came over to join us, reaching up to lick my face before squatting at my feet. I scooped him into my arms and stroked his belly. Adam was making me tea in that oversize sports mug that always sat oddly in their Farrow and Ball haven. He padded around the kitchen with 6 Music blaring. I tried to remember the words the consultant in the intensive care unit had said to me. People rarely live in the moment.

  ‘Today is a happy day because it’s your birthday and I’m here with you,’ I said with slightly forced gaiety to Mimi.

  ‘Will you go home and cry after you leave, E?’ said Bertie suddenly.

  And Mimi and I laughed in the way you do, when a four-year-old totally had you nailed.

  October 2015

  I was at my desk, editing a piece on ‘This season’s MUST-have accessories!’ surrounded by the gentle hum of office life.

  My mobile rang. I didn’t recognise the number.

  ‘Emily? It’s Gregory.’

  Gregory was one of my dad’s closest friends, the only person who remained a permanent fixture in his life. While most people had struggled to keep up with his peripatetic chaos, Gregory had found a way to view him with tolerant affection. His forgiving stance threw my exasperated absence into sharp relief and I assumed he’d been given an unflattering portrait of me. I steeled myself for a difficult discussion.

  ‘Emily, it’s your dad. He collapsed in a café. He’s in hospital. I think he’s dying. I’m so sorry.’

  My workmates responded with concern but disbelief. What, again? their glances conveyed. I’d made no secret of the fact that my father and I were estranged, so they clearly weren’t sure whether the standard sympathy that accompanied news of a dying parent was appropriate.

  I grabbed my jacket and, out of sheer habit, sprayed myself with the perfume on my desk. The scent hit me in sickly, vulgar waves on my way down in the lift, as if I’d defiantly refused to honour this news with the respect it deserved. A sweet colleague had offered to order me a cab but I told her I wanted to clear my head with a walk. ‘I need to make some calls,’ I said. That last bit was a lie. I had no one I needed to tell. It was just me with my new persistent stalker, complicated shock.

  Autumn had arrived and office workers darted across Blackfriars Bridge, confronting the breeze by clutching their suit jackets tighter. They laughed into phones and dodged cycles with impatient purpose. They would get that call about a father one
day, if they hadn’t already. I imagined them phoning loved ones as they rushed to unite in collective grief around the family patriarch. Hugging, getting each other coffees and taking turns to keep vigil, bonded over their loss. Consoling each other with memories before returning to their own lives, altered by grief but not consumed with a lonely dark shame. That was not how the dog families, the normal people, lived.

  When I got to the hospital lobby there was a film crew rushing around with an air of vague entitlement. A woman in a suit fiddled with an earpiece and read through some notes. She smiled sympathetically when she saw my grave face and swift pace. Sorry for intruding on your pain with this trivia, her look said. I felt fraudulent. I didn’t deserve the respectful glance she had thrown me.

  I had called some of my friends. Jane was supportive and offered to come back from her work trip in Leeds but I insisted that she didn’t need to. Daisy my producer was sympathetic and Polly was at home nearby. ‘I can be there in twenty minutes.’ She arrived dispensing hugs and love and I was relieved to have an ally here, to protect me from the potential crew of angry villagers with flaming torches. But Gregory was calm and compassionate when he showed me into a cubicle in the critical-care unit.

  My dad’s eyes were closed tightly as he breathed the deep sighs of the heavily medicated.

  ‘He had a stroke. They’ve dosed him up on morphine but they’ve said they’re not sure how long it will be now. I’m sorry,’ Gregory said softly, putting an arm around me.

  I knew from my recent crash course in the end stages of life that Dad had entered a place from which he was unlikely to return. He looked crumpled and unshaven; his white whiskery chin suggested a lack of daily self-care that was heartbreaking. I imagined him in his local café when his life juddered to its conclusion. Probably with his copy of The Times, a cup of tea and a cake, quoting Shakespeare to bemused waitresses, still grasping fragments of his life as a celebrated intellectual, dazzling people with eloquence in a TV studio.

  When we were children he used to read us Shelley’s poem ‘Ozymandias’. We were drawn to its silly-sounding name rather than its treatment of the ephemeral nature of greatness. He encouraged us to quote from it, ‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’ every time we drove past a ruin or a derelict house. The childhood game popped into my mind now as I thought of his once formidable mind, robbed of its faculties, falling into nothingness. But I reminded myself that I had surrendered my right to feel sentimental over his last hours. It was as preposterous as the woman who put the cat in the bin respectfully placing flowers at the scene.

  I spent the next twenty-fours reacquainting myself with the critical-care vigil routine, the hushed tones of nurses, the bowl with a sponge, the long nights. A handful of visitors arrived to say their goodbyes. Joan Bakewell, who was loyal to the last, and finally, Anita, who sounded the death knell of my parents’ marriage. Her expensive clothes and refined presence emphasised the chasm between his old world and the depleted existence he finally led. She seemed kind and sensitive. I found out that she had bought him a TV not long ago and had kept a concerned eye on him over the years.

  Perhaps it had been easier for us all to lay the blame at her feet rather than address the deeper truth: that my father simply never wanted a part in a domestic tableau. The home-wrecking monster of my childhood turned out to be a decent woman who had come here today quietly to pay her final respects.

  Evening arrived. I lifted the sponge to his mouth regularly, wiped his face and stroked his brow, just the way I had with Rach and Mum. I thought of something a university boyfriend once said to me that had always stayed in my mind. ‘I can play football. Rich can fix a car, among other things,’ he had said, gesturing to our fellow student, who was expertly rolling a joint. ‘But what can you actually DO, Em?’ I answered him now, twenty-five years later. I had found my skill. I was a world-class expert in the last moments of life.

  ‘Hey, Dad, your mouth’s all dry,’ I said, wiping the sponge across his lips.

  And then his eyes opened. He looked at me for just a few seconds. He seemed confused, slightly stunned. But there was something else. Relief. You came, his fleeting gaze seemed to say.

  We would never get to have our final chat, to put our differences aside and mend the flaming bridges that divided us. And I couldn’t pretend that this moment had successfully buried the past. But it felt significant – perhaps more than any long-drawn-out conversation ever could have been.

  It was 3.00am. The dark silence was broken by the sound of equipment humming in the ward. I huddled up on a chair next to my father’s bed, wrapped in a scarf and longing for a warm shoulder to collapse onto. For someone else to come in and take charge.

  My dad must have been nearing the end, which was why I was still there, gripped by a sense of duty that compelled me to stay until it happened. But I was desperate for sleep. I asked the nurse whether she thought I could go home for a few hours. I needed her permission to leave, so that I wasn’t the daughter who abandoned her father in death as well as life.

  ‘You look exhausted all on your own in there! Go and curl up and come back in the morning,’ she suggested.

  Hall pass given, I climbed into a cab and embarked on the now strangely familiar Magic FM ride from hospital to home.

  I was making my way into the ward the next day when I got a text from my father’s girlfriend.

  Dad died this am. He on ward til you get there. If I do not see you please contact me urgent – have documents you will need.

  I looked at my dad’s face for the final time. The white wiry brows, his mouth in the elegant repose of stillness, his parting swept slightly to the right, eternally in dashing Seventies TV presenter style.

  ‘I’m sorry that we never straightened things out. But I really did love you. Say hello to Mum and Rach,’ I said.

  I left the hospital and stepped into the noise of the traffic-congested Euston Road. It felt surreal, losing the last thread of my past. Everyone had gone home, the lights had come on and it was just me with a bunch of memories. It was almost predictable that they had all ended up going in the wrong order, abandoning the traditional form of oldest goes first. We never had mastered the art of doing things by the rules.

  I didn’t tell anyone over the coming months how much my dad’s death had impacted me. I didn’t feel I had the right to feel sad about it. Nor did I talk about the weird feelings I was having, that the loss of my three family members in as many years had acted as a catalyst and hurled up things that felt overwhelming.

  My weekly hour with Sue became a cocoon of comfort. It was like getting into a warm bath, where I could turn off the outside world and shed my skin. I remembered, when I collapsed at work after my mother died, that someone had said to me, ‘But you’re spending all this money on therapy, how could this happen? She’s meant to be curing you!’ I’d felt oddly envious of that worldview, where loss was dealt with in a neat time frame. ‘Get fixed in twenty-eight days or your money back!’

  I found myself calling the Samaritans some nights, just to talk to someone when the pain got bad and I felt out of control and didn’t want to pretend anymore. I didn’t tell any of my friends or even Sue how I was feeling. What if a policeman turned up and sectioned me? What if they put me on suicide watch or I was whisked off to one of those stately homes where the grandeur had been diluted by institutional fire doors, and I never came back?

  And then one day I decided to make a phone call. And it changed everything.

  Part Three

  Raymond

  Chapter Twelve

  October 2016

  I handed over my phone, iPad, laptop and book. The woman took them from me and placed them in ziplock bags, writing my name on a label that she stuck firmly on the front. ‘Is that everything?’ she asked kindly, but with a tone suggesting this wasn’t her first time at the contraband rodeo.

  I nodded firmly. ‘That’s the lot.’

  A few hours later I was standing in a room with s
ixteen people who were total strangers this morning. I had a sticker on my jumper announcing who I was. But in place of my name, I had written the word ‘UNLOVEABLE’ in black Sharpie. As first impressions went, it needed workshopping. Though some of the stickers on the assembled jumpers and T-shirts revealed even more challenging things about the wearer.

  It might have looked like the world’s most ineffective speed-dating event but it’s called the Hoffman Process, a seven-day retreat that many people who’ve done talk about evangelically as something that has transformed their life.

  I’d come across it occasionally over the years. A friend’s boyfriend had done it, to confront a spiralling music-industry lifestyle. A comic I knew had signed up to address some unresolved issues with his late father and embrace his professional dreams. A celebrated foreign correspondent had written a moving piece about how it helped to shed the negative behaviours she feared passing on to her child.

  I’d mentally filed it away as one of those things I might do in another, bolder life, along with leaving my office job and pursuing a career I felt passionate about. And redecorating my home. Oh, and finally getting a dog.

  But I found all sorts of reasons not to do it. It cost too much money. People would take the piss out of me. Perhaps it was a scam run by narcissistic gurus who would make me walk on hot coals. And then deny me medical treatment for my third-degree burns because I had to ‘really feel the power of that pain!’

  My father had always hated this kind of self-exploration. He called it ‘facile Californianism’ and insisted it was all a symptom of ‘the Me Decade’. So at the heart of my hesitance was also an inherited cultural snobbery. I was urban and sharp-tongued. I didn’t belong with people who went on retreats. It all sounded very frayed friendship bracelets, inspirational quotes and earrings that balanced your chakras.

  But for some reason I kept coming back to the Hoffman Process. One night I was up late, Googling cheery stuff like ‘how to cope when your whole family suddenly dies’. I came across a piece written by a woman whose sister had been murdered. She had found the process helpful in confronting her lifelong anger over the loss. I found more reviews, one from the musician Goldie, who simply said ‘it saved my life’ and another by the actor Thandie Newton, who called it ‘an MOT for the soul’. Even the respected psychologist Oliver James seemed happy to recommend it, suggesting that it helped strip away ‘the layers of scar tissue created by past experiences.’