Last week I wrote about how I was inspired to pen a short story while on a train, seemingly out of nowhere. This week I figured I’d do something different to the usual format on this blog, and share the story I was referring to.
I’d love to hear what you think of the story. Tell me how it made you feel. Tell me if you’d love to see more of these short stories featured in my weekly posts. Or tell me otherwise if that’s how you feel. Who knows, there might just be a published short story collection with my name on it sometime in the future.
— Maisy —
I met this girl a while ago. We clicked straight away and I knew we would spend the rest of our lives together.
She was stunning, a real head-turner, and I’m not just saying that because I’m biased, which I am. Whenever we went out walking – and we went out walking a lot, it was probably the thing we did together the most – people would stop and talk to her, or otherwise try to get her attention. She elicited smiles all around and brought joy to those she interacted with. Her curly, sunkissed hair was an attention magnet, even though she didn’t always like it.
A part of me felt jealous of all the attention she got when we went out together. But the other part of me – perhaps the bigger, more sensible part – was proud. Here was a girl who could spend her time with anyone she wanted, and she chose me to spend it with. She chose me every day, and if she suspected that I ever felt less than, in her own way she showed me I was hers.
Much as we liked our long walks along the canal and our brisk runs around the park, some days, we just lay around, snacking and watching TV. Ours was the picture of domestic bliss. We didn’t need fancy trappings, we didn’t feel the need to perform for social media, we didn’t feel pressured to do the sorts of things society expected of us. We just did our thing, together, always.
Until we didn’t. One day, I noticed something wasn’t quite right with her. I knew she wouldn’t tell me – she wasn’t much of a talker, and she certainly wasn’t one to complain – but I could see, or rather, feel that she was in pain. I booked an appointment, we got in the car, and drove to the clinic. It was my idea, and much as I convinced myself it was just a precaution, just a check-up to be safe, inside, I feared the worst.
My worst fears were confirmed. She had a tumour, an overgrowth pushing on her kidneys. Before I could ask for a prognosis, I heard a string of words come out of the good doctor’s mouth. I could only pick out “hemangiosarcoma”, “metastasised”, and “invasive” before I zoned out.
I cursed myself for not seeing the signs sooner. Over the last few weeks, she was eating less, even when I made her favourite meals and bought all her favourite snacks. She opted for shorter walks too, but I was so blinded by my self-interest – the knowledge that shorter walks meant fewer opportunities for her to be admired and chatted up by men and women alike – that I neither objected to the routes she opted for nor questioned her choices. Alas, there I was, there we were, confronted with the prospects of a truncated rest of our lives. Forever was just around the corner and I wasn’t ready for it.
The next few weeks passed in a haze. Mostly sombre. Mostly silent. She was heavily medicated. I was resignedly distraught, disconnected from reality. Neither of us was prepared for the end-of-life scenario we’d been thrust into. There were no more walks by this point, as she could barely move. Oh, how I craved one more trip to the park. How I so dearly, desperately wished for just one more walk along the canal. I found myself bargaining, or at least willing to bargain, with whatever higher power out there, with whoever would listen. I promised I wouldn’t get jealous if someone showered her with attention. I swore I would smile and happily go along with it if only it meant she would be well enough to come out on a walk. Just one more walk. The more I bargained, the more I bemoaned all that time and energy I’d wasted on pointless jealousy when I could have spent that time appreciating this goddess sent from the heavens to enrich my life and that of everyone she crossed paths with.
Bargaining didn’t help. It didn’t work. She passed after a few weeks of excruciating pain. I did what I could to make her comfortable. The doctor did too. But we all knew it was a losing battle.
It took a while to accept this, of course. While she seemed to make peace with it, as was in her quiet, accepting nature, I felt the need to fight on, to look for a cure, or remedy, or procedure, something, anything to buy more time. I didn’t know it at the time, but the moment I realised there was nothing else to do was during one of her check-ups, when, in response to my enquiring about experimental treatments and clinical trials for the umpteenth time, the doctor closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“It might be time to accept this,” the doctor said, as she put her hand on mine. “It isn’t that uncommon for her breed. There’s nothing else we can do for her now.” And then she said the words that have stayed with me ever since. “The right thing to do might be to put her down.”
I cried all the way home.
Even in her pain, in her last few days in this world, she sensed my pain. As we rode home in the car, me driving, her in the passenger seat, she reached up to my face – a struggle for her, I have no doubt – and licked my tears. It was a sort of final act of love, as if she was consoling me in her own way.
It’s okay. It’ll all be okay.
We buried her three days later. I made sure to erect a headstone for her. Others thought it unusual, but I didn’t care. I wanted the world to know all about her. In a roundabout way, that's why I’m writing this, to honour her memory, to expand on the succinct words engraved on the slab of concrete at her final resting place…
Here lies Maisy A golden retriever of 12 She loved a long walk and a good lay-in She’s the best girl who ever lived
P.S.: My debut non-fiction book, Art Is The Way, and my middle-grade novella, A Hollade Christmas, are out everywhere now. You can get them in all good bookstores and from all major online vendors.