Issue 58 - Saying goodbye to a creature I loved very much
OCTOBER 2023
I bought some expensive perfume this month. I got the tiny trial bottle first, then waited and waited for the post to arrive, excited for the first spritz.
But the morning the parcel arrived, I didn't want to wear it.
*
We got Bella the Jack Russell when I was seventeen. Her little face was framed by wirey hair, she had tiny ginger patches on her cheeks and the beadiest black eyes. She had an unwavering love of squeaky rubber toys, and knew when new ones arrived, smelling through their flimsy cardboard boxes.
But though I loved her, I was no longer the girl who wanted to stay at home with the puppy, as I had been with our previous dog. Now, I was going to my first nightclubs, to 'WKD wednesdays' and wearing a Ra Ra skirt that matched my best friend's, paired with a FCUK top that my grandma hated. The Wash, where we'd go dancing, smelt like feet and the rancid, pre-smoking ban hum. We were going to festivals where there was much Welsh mud and much cheap vodka, and the night air tasted unexpectedly cool.
But though I loved her, I was no longer the girl who wanted to stay at home with the puppy, as I had been with our previous dog. Now, I was going to my first nightclubs, to 'WKD wednesdays' and wearing a Ra Ra skirt that matched my best friend's, paired with a FCUK top that my grandma hated. The Wash, where we'd go dancing, smelt like feet and the rancid, pre-smoking ban hum. We were going to festivals where there was much Welsh mud and much cheap vodka, and the night air tasted unexpectedly cool.
I went to university, started wearing a wooly beret, met some incredible people, felt incredibly homesick, and returned for the odd weekend, where Bella became a comfort. Though she was never particularly keen on a cuddle, she loved people and loved to play. To me, she became the ultimate symbol of safe domesticity. The opposite of university halls, their mini fridges and their dirty carpets, you arrived home and were greeted by her bark, her waving tail.
And so it was for the next sixteen years, most of which I spent far, far away from her. When things went wrong - with boys, with jobs, with life, she would be there whenever I returned. Wolfing down the cats' food when you weren't looking, begging for you to throw the rubber duck one more time, tail bolt upright on the beach. Even when I would leave her to return to my city life, I would be covered in her coarse white hairs, would be picking them off my winter coat for weeks.
And so last week, now living just fifteen minutes from her, it was with a very heavy heart that I got out of bed on Wednesday morning. Ploughed through emails in the day, painfully aware of what was to come.
I tidied my hair before leaving the house, considering for a second a spritz of the new dark brown bottle on the mantle piece. But I knew, if I sprayed it, the scent would take me back to this day whenever I spritzed it again.
*
Bella was tired and confused now. Blind, deaf and spending the vast majority of her days sleeping.
The tall, kind vet arrived, the sting of chemicals in his wake. We fed her chicken, stroked her, offered our hands for her to sniff, held her warm head. Our tears slipped down her coarse hair as she went to sleep for the last time.
She was buried under the low, bright October sun, tucked up in her bed, under the damp earth of the wildflower meadow.
Next year, she will blossom into a colourful array of poppies, cornflowers, buttercups and ferns.
I may as well have sprayed the perfume though - every day I have worn it since I have thought of her. Not of the afternoon she was buried, but of those days when she would frolic in a summer field, nose in the wind, ears bobbing in the clear Welsh sunshine.
Good Things to click on
Some lush ideas here
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Chloe made me this soba salad - 10/10
Enjoyed this story very much
The title of the podcast 'what's it like to go slowly blind?' sounds so bleak, but the content is engaging and hopeful. We should all be using alt text!