Stray Dog

by Gareth O'Callaghan

  “Jo, I’m really sorry. This should never have happened. I miss you,” she said tearfully.

  “It’s OK. I’ve missed you too, for so long,” I replied. I put the phone down and felt a huge sense of relief and a surge of comfort. Now I was going to have my big sister back in my life – someone I knew would look out for me and look after me.

  11

  As the days became longer and grew warmer, our time together was growing shorter. John slept more during the day but often lay awake for hours at night. The doctor suggested it might be better for both of us to sleep in separate beds. That way John might be more comfortable and I would enjoy longer spells of sleep.

  We both agreed this would not happen. We needed to be as close as we could to each other. So we slept beside each other, holding hands, clinging to each other’s necks or shoulders, or stroking each other’s cheeks. Despite the discomfort and pain he was clearly suffering, he never once complained. He would just squeeze my hand and force a small, short smile. I had started to tell John I loved him at every available opportunity. And he said the same to me.

  Sonny lay across the end of the bed all the time now. It was as if she was keeping watch, waiting for a moment that we both seemed to know was becoming closer by the hour.

  The doctor told me it would only be a matter of days now. John asked him to stop giving him pain-killing injections. They relieved the pain but took away his sense of awareness and brought on a sickening sleep that took him hours to wake up from.

  And so my John was acutely aware of what was going on around him, but also in acute pain from a disease that was quickly claiming him.

  One night I lulled him to sleep, humming a few lines from one of his favourite Chopin waltzes. His breathing was heavy and wheezy, so I rubbed his back as he lay peacefully on his side. Once I knew he was sleeping, I patted Sonny on the head and lay back on the bed and closed my eyes.

  I dreamed of the small church in Rome, Our Lady of the Vines, and the beautiful day we had been given for our secret wedding. There was a smell of lavender and honey melon in the air. The peacefulness of the small churchyard in the foothills above the city took my breath away. We’d planned it quickly, with no fuss and no guests. A friend of John’s acted as our witness. The priest blessed our vows in a twenty-minute ceremony overlooking the River Tiber.

  We stayed on for a week, in a beautiful chateau that Eric, John’s friend, had organised for us. We lazed together during the warm days, sampling local wines and eating home-baked, piping-hot lasagne. And we were so deeply in love with each other that words were not easy to find to describe the intensely wonderful feelings we had for each other.

  We marvelled at the unspoilt beauty of the mountains. The lush greenery seemed more intense and memorable because we were looking at it through each other’s eyes. And every time John told me he loved me, he fired up my soul to a new level. I needed him, breathed in every minute we spent together that week. I missed him terribly whenever he went to make a phone call or when Eric stole him away for an hour.

  And how is it that the years in between can turn something so precious and love-made into a casual friendship that runs skin deep? How can such intense feelings become distant memories? How could my man and I forget what it was like to feel weak in the presence of such beauty?

  I opened my eyes. I remembered it with the same intensity. I realised that I had been given another chance with this amazing man. We had at our fingertips the emotions we felt all those years ago. A dog had caused us to look at each other closely and to fall in love again. We were falling in love at a special time. It was a period where there was no room for doubt, or second opinions, or fear, or questions.

  I couldn’t help thinking about the petty tiffs and the silly rows we had built up like walls over the years, usually because one of us wasn’t getting what we wanted, what we demanded. And these arguments often stemmed from my refusal to accept that John had a say, not just in his life, but also in mine.

  Yet these petty disputes never featured during those times when a sense of love and connection dominated our lives. When we got close-up and honest with each other, there was a depth of understanding that became the mainstay of our relationship. I’d missed that deep sense of belonging for so long.

  Now – thanks to a stray dog that ran past me at my front door and made our home her home – I had that love and caring back in my heart and back in my life for a second time.

  12

  The room was warm. In the distance I could hear the early milk-float. Birds were chirping in the trees at the bottom of the garden. Dawn was breaking. It startled me. I must have slept for hours. Jesus! What if John had been calling my name?

  I sat up quickly and looked at the small alarm clock on the bedside table. It was after five. I’d slept for three hours. I checked my man and I froze. He was lying perfectly still. Something inside told me not to panic. He seemed slumped on his side, his arm hanging over the edge of the bed, silent and still.

  I could feel my heart speed up. The tears began to well in my eyes. I placed my hand over my mouth as I whispered his name. “John … John!” I said louder.

  He didn’t answer.

  I jumped out of bed and tried to think of what I had to do. “Don’t do this, John. Please don’t go!” I remember saying as I ran around to his side of the bed. I knelt beside him and shook his arm. He didn’t move. His eyes were barely open. He had a peaceful look on his face. There was no pain any more. He didn’t seem bothered by how sick he had been getting in recent weeks. He looked resigned now.

  Tears streamed down my face as I stroked his hair and whispered, “I love you with all my heart and all my life.” Normally he would react by smiling first and then hugging me and repeating the words back. But that morning, my John was beyond telling me anything in the earthly sense.

  I hugged him and watched as Sonny edged forward cautiously and licked John’s ear. She whimpered and sat to one side as I tried to make John more comfortable in the bed. He was heavier than usual, despite the way the disease had ravaged him and, lately, caused him to lose five stone in weight.

  I felt his forehead. The clammy dampness that I’d felt for weeks had been replaced now with cooler, softer skin. I placed my ear to his nose and listened for a breath. I gently pressed his chest, hoping for a small heartbeat. I placed a pillow behind him and propped his head forward so I could hold him in my arms.

  I was too late.

  I phoned the pound later that afternoon to tell them Sonny had gone missing again. I told the caring voice on the phone that my husband had died. I didn’t have a chance to look for my dog because I had been so busy with people calling and plans to be made. I’d left the side gate open and she must have slipped out. I remembered John’s words. “She’ll be back in a few hours.” And I asked John to bring her back to me.

  I spent that day asking John to please come back too. I wandered in and out of the bedroom where he had lain for weeks. The bed was empty now, but the house was filled with something I found hard to describe. It was something – a sense of warm spirit – I felt my husband had left behind to help me through the grief and the sheer sense of loss. It’s only now, when I look back on the never-ending hours of those first few days, that I realise he was carrying me. It felt like he was saying to me, “Thank you for the weeks and months you carried me.”

  Neighbours called on and off for a couple of weeks. The friendships I had built up over the time leading up to John’s death became my support. The pain of loss, and the loneliness that comes with it, were strangely kept at bay by the empathy and outpouring of emotion that came with the hugs and soft words of encouragement and handshakes. I felt like I was floating, unsure of what was going on and what I could expect to happen next.

  While the adults chatted kindly and poured me more drinks, the children searched for Sonny. Notices were hung in shop windows again. The police were contacted and I waited. But she didn’t come home.

  13

  Pa
rt of me wanted them all to go home, to stop calling to see if I was “doing fine”. But a deeper part of me didn’t want to be alone in this house now. My husband was gone and my dog had vanished – all in the same breath, it felt.

  My life was on hold it seemed. I needed answers to questions. I prayed that I might be sent a sign to let me know that John was fine, that he was beyond the awful pain and torment of the last few months. I wanted to be sure that he hadn’t gone somewhere where he suffered alone and the pain grew worse. But whom was I praying to?

  It made no sense. My world felt utterly empty now, and the idea of praying to someone I couldn’t see, to a God I’d never really believed in, seemed like a daft notion. If there really was a God – I must confess I didn’t believe there was – then why had he left me without both husband and dog? I tried to imagine the kind of support Sonny might have been to me in the days and weeks after John’s death. How could a loving and kind God deprive me so harshly? It made no sense to me. I started to spend hours of each new, awful day in bed with the curtains closed.

  The death of someone so loved creates such chaos in one’s life that it’s almost too hard to explain and too painful to search for words that might explain it.

  It was only after John’s death that I began to realise the personal space he occupied in my life, in my mind and in my soul. I had always been the cynical one in our house. “Of course there’s no such thing as life after death!” I would say whenever John got into one of his deep-thinking moods. He had always told me he wasn’t afraid of dying. I had asked him to stop being so morbid. It was because I was terrified of the idea of death, because I couldn’t see beyond its final moments.

  In the weeks after his death I cried for him. I longed for our dog who would have remained a connection between us. I felt so lost that I thought about ending my own life to be with him, if there was such a place to be. My sister Penny begged me to go to the doctor.

  “He’ll give you something to help you get over this,” she said kindly.

  “Help me get over what?” I shouted at her.

  What exactly did she think I wanted to be helped over? People seem to think it goes away or it gets better after a few weeks. Others think you wake up some morning and decide you’ve had enough crying: it’s time to pick up the pieces and pull yourself together.

  I know I felt like that at times in the past when I looked at other people trying to cope with loss that knows no depths.

  I asked Penny to go home that evening. She refused. I demanded. She went. It was one of those lowest moments that sometimes defines the most difficult stage of grief, that instantly comes to mind when we look back at something that almost destroyed us.

  I decided to go back to bed forever that afternoon. I’d make a cup of tea, add a very large brandy and lie down. I wanted to be alone with nicer thoughts that I’d try to find once the room was dark and life felt shut out.

  And then it happened – one of those moments that utterly changes everything you’ve ever believed in the value of, everything you thought was impossible and terrifying and beyond reason.

  14

  I was stirring the mug of tea when I caught the spoon in the cuff of my sleeve. The boiling tea spilled across the work-top and down onto the floor, splashing and burning my hand.

  I tried to remember where I had put the tube of burn cream I’d kept for cases of emergency. I took the entire contents of the bathroom cabinet out, rooted through presses and checked drawers. John must have taken it and put it somewhere else. I was about to close the bottom kitchen drawer, which was full to the brim with everything from a needle to an anchor, when I spotted it.

  It was a bulging cardboard wallet, packed tightly with dozens of old photos. Most of them were colour but some were black and white. It hurt me horribly to think there were some of John and me together down through the years that I hadn’t seen for ages. But curiosity got the better of me.

  I sat on the armchair, close to the French windows where I’d felt so peaceful in the past. I started to place the photos neatly on the coffee table. Some I recognised easily. Others bore faces I’d forgotten with time. They must have been tucked away at the back of the drawer for ten years. And then I saw it.

  It was a strange photo, black and white, worn and ragged around the corners. It must have been thirty years old, at least. Three rows of teenage boys sat neatly for the camera. I studied each row, each face and then … I froze. My heart started to pound again, the way it did the moment I woke and realised my husband had gone.

  There, in the front row, was a young boy I recognised. He was sitting for the photo and smiling, holding a white shaggy dog. It was the young boy who had called at my hall door the previous week, having found Sonny in his back garden. The dog was identical to my Sonny.

  The shock was almost too much. It didn’t make any sense to me whatsoever. I felt frightened and slightly sick to think that it might not be a coincidence. But it had to be. This photo was thirty years old. The young boy who called to my door carrying Sonny was no older than fourteen. But the likeness was chilling.

  The caption “Intermediate Junior Football Champions 1971” was printed across the top of the photo along with the name of the school. I studied it again and again for maybe an hour. Each time I picked it up I held it closer. I wanted to find reasons to believe that this boy and his dog were not whom I thought they were.

  A few minutes later I had found the phone number of the college. I hesitated, waiting to think about what I might be told once the phone was answered. What if they didn’t have any records? What if they said they couldn’t tell me what I needed to know?

  The phone rang and rang. Eventually a softly spoken voice out of breath answered. “Hello, Saint Paul’s. Can I help you?” She waited.

  I froze. I hung up. And then I called again. “I hope you can help me. I found an old photo dating back to 1971. I’m trying to identify someone in the shot. Would you have such records?” I waited, feeling the pace of my heart.

  “Not right away. But I could call you back, possibly today, with the information. That’s if we still have it on record.”

  I thanked her and hung up. The silence of the house made my heartbeat sound louder. I tried to relax but couldn’t. It occurred to me that I’d forgotten how sore my hand was. It was swollen now, but the excitement and anticipation I felt seemed to drown out the pain.

  I was dozing when the phone rang an hour or so later. The college secretary asked to speak to me and told me her name. I held my breath and waited. She told me the young student I had been asking about was called John Duhan. My married name was Duhan. The boy was John, my husband.

  I don’t remember saying goodbye, or putting the phone down, or finding myself walking in the park in the spring sunshine on a windy afternoon in March. It all seemed just to happen. It made no sense to me at all. But in another way it made sense as to why Sonny had gone within hours of John’s death. It gave a whole new meaning to the expression “A dog is a man’s best friend.”

  I felt lonely that afternoon, but lonely in a different way to how I’d been feeling in recent days. I was happy to know that two lifelong friends had been reunited once again and that one of them had come to the aid of the other when he was in his hour of most need. Sonny had rarely left John’s side in the short time he had left here. Now I knew why.

  I suppose it’s a sad story with a happy ending. It makes me realise that I, like so many others, have taken so much for granted during my lifetime.

  I always thought I made the rules that determined how I lived. Now I know there’s so much more going on than we really pay heed to. If only we could, life would mean so much more. The pain we feel we have to suffer would melt away to be replaced by hope and wonder.

  John’s death has given way to an understanding and a belief I never thought I would be able to share with anyone – not even in my quietest moments when I talk to myself. Now I know John is more than life itself, and just as Sonny was there for him, h
e is always there for me.

  OPEN DOOR SERIES

  SERIES ONE

  Not Just for Christmas by Roddy Doyle (TG)

  In High Germany by Dermot Bolger

  Sad Song by Vincent Banville (TG)

  Maggie’s Story by Sheila O’Flanagan

  Jesus and Billy Are Off to Barcelona

  by Deirdre Purcell

  Ripples by Patricia Scanlan

  SERIES TWO

  No Dress Rehearsal by Marian Keyes

  Joe’s Wedding by Gareth O’Callaghan (TG)

  It All Adds Up by Margaret Neylon

  Second Chance by Patricia Scanlan (TG)

  Pipe Dreams by Anne Schulman

  Old Money, New Money by Peter Sheridan (TG)

  SERIES THREE

  The Builders by Maeve Binchy

  Letter from Chicago by Cathy Kelly (TG)

  Driving with Daisy by Tom Nestor

  The Comedian by Joseph O’Connor

  Has Anyone Here Seen Larry?

  by Deirdre Purcell

  An Accident Waiting to Happen

  by Vincent Banville

  SERIES FOUR

  Not a Star by Nick Hornby

  Mad Weekend by Roddy Doyle

  Fair-Weather Friend by Patricia Scanlan (TG)

  Stray Dog by Gareth O’Callaghan (TG)

  The Story of Joe Brown by Rose Doyle (TG)

  Mrs.Whippy by Cecelia Ahern (TG)

  (TG):Teacher’s Guide available at www.gemmamedia.com