I can’t even believe I’m writing this.
Today we said goodbye to our Wanderlust Dog, my favourite child and the original Thing. Even though I can’t yet believe he’s not here anymore, the house already seems deafeningly empty and the world most certainly feels like its axis has changed. Suddenly even breathing has become a little bit harder.
We first met Bailey in Houston. We’d just bought a house and had been trying for our first baby for almost a year. To say he snuck his way into our hearts would be a complete understatement, if not an outright lie. He bounced his way there, just as he bounced everywhere, running at us full tilt and skidding round the corners on our hardwood floors with all the excited exuberance that only a four-month old puppy can possess. Granny Wanderlust always said he must have awakened a motherly instinct in me because I was soon pregnant and, when baby Thing 1 arrived, and then baby Thing 2, he took it all in his stride suffering pulled fur but enjoying the products of our efforts to wean that landed on the floor. I can’t say he always loved it. Many was the time when he would sigh and get up to leave when they came in squabbling, or just give me a look as if to share his exasperation with me. But they adored him with their tiny and then growing hearts, even if chasing him around the kitchen wasn’t the best way for them to show it.
From Houston we moved to London, then to Doha, and on to Singapore. He did long haul flights and quarantine, we had to leave him behind when paperwork wasn’t done in time and have backup plans for crisis scenarios but never once did it occur to us to leave him behind as others suggested we should. He was ours and we were his, for better or for worse. And oh, how he made it all better every time.
Having lived in all these places, I know he will leave a trail of broken hearts strewn across the world when people he has known find out that he has gone. He truly was one in a million, converting dog-fearing children and dog-objecting parents in minutes. “Bailey is the only dog that has ever made me consider getting one of our own!” was something said to us on more than one occasion and I know for a fact that some people did, in fact, go on to adopt dogs of their own because of him. He was always completely and utterly convinced that every single person or animal to come into our house was there with the sole purpose of being his friend. To be fair, almost without fail, that’s exactly how they left.
I’d love to say Bailey’s last few weeks have been an amazing way for him to leave but the truth is they haven’t, they’ve been traumatic for all of us, filled with an anxious dog who cries all night and musing about what exactly it was that ailed him from dementia and slipped discs to tumours in his spine and brain. Daily, if not hourly we’ve second guessed what the right thing to do was and when to do it. Everyone told me we’d know when he was ready and when we would be ready. The truth is I was never ready for this, even now that “this” has been done.
We never thought about any of that when we adopted him all those years ago. We always wanted a dog that would be family but never knew what that truly meant. We never expected a dog to become part of the fabric that weaved between the members of our family, to become the very grain in the wood that makes us who we are, the fifth part that completed our whole. We always expected that the decision, whenever it came, would be clear cut, not like the tightrope of grey area that we’ve tip-toed along since getting back from summer. We hoped to find the utopian balance between saying goodbye too early and keeping him here longer than was fair, a balance that was made so much more difficult by our own selfish conflicting desires to keep him here forever while hating watching his pain.
The nuances of such a decision are rarely talked about, nor are the realities of doggy dementia (I never even knew that was a thing), nor are the intricacies of talking to teen and tween Things who only see things in black and white about how and why to make the decision to let him go. We realised last night that the Things never knew him as a puppy, that they don’t see how dramatic the decline has been compared to the puppy we first met, that they are mourning different memories to us but that their lives have only ever had Bailey in them and their lives tomorrow will look very different from their eyes.
It’s even more than that for us, though. Saying goodbye to Bailey feels like saying goodbye to all those years that we had him. He feels like the connection between the us now and the carefree couple that fell in love with him on sight all that time ago in Houston. He’s the connection to the house we renovated in London and to the compound in Doha where our babies became children. It doesn’t feel like 13 years ago since we got him, but in that time I can look back and see how far we’ve come as well as know that we’ve somehow accumulated more than the extra boxes that join us with every move. He’s been with us every step of the way for every adventure, almost every move, every kid, each house, all those packing boxes and flights (both of which he hated, hated, hated), has known all our friends and family.. Counting it all up, it’s a lot. To think that he won’t be with us for any more of any of that is honestly more than I can consider at this point.
Bailey-dog, when I think of you now, for some reason I see you running as fast as you can through a field of tall grass, letting each blade brush against your face like you used to do when we would jokingly call you Simba. I think of you rolling on your back there, making that funny, satisfied grunting sound that you made, and then trotting over to get your back scratched. I hate that we will have no more adventures together, but I hope that wherever you have gone will be a brand new adventure for you and, even if it’s without us, it will also be without pain, without the loud noises you hated, and maybe with a cat or two who actually wants to play with you for once.
I read a post yesterday about wishing retiring pilots blue skies and tailwinds and, while it seems ridiculous to wish that for a dog, maybe it’s less ridiculous for an expat dog even if it was one who hated flying and had a panic attack whenever the packers came. Fly high Bailey-boo, we wish you blue skies, tailwinds, and all the good things, really all all all the good things. We miss you forever and our hearts will never be the same.
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