C’est fait

Okay. So I lied about the crying. I may have just done a teeny weeny bit more when the vet was busy locating a vein in Max’s front leg to insert the syringe, and I was stroking his face, and reassuring him that everything would be all right. Hmmm… I suppose that depends on your definition of all right. But to be honest, Max didn’t seem very bothered about it anyway. I think he just wanted her to hurry up and go, so he could go back to sleep.

All in all, it was a swift and easy thing, over in no time at all. Without drama. At the point of death, all the urine that Max had been saving up for the last couple of days was released in a long, orange stream, that caught the evening sunlight as it snaked away across the yard, to puddle just below the steps to the house. Yeah – thanks for that!

And I was once again struck by the suddenness of the transition from life to death. Within a second, our old friend Max became nothing but a floppy dead body, to be heaved into the wheelbarrow hearse and transported to his waiting grave under the big ash trees on the rough land.

Simon would really rather not have been there, but because of my clumsiness with French, he needed to be there to explain to the vet about Max’s condition. At the point when Max lost consciousness and no longer needed my attention, I looked up through a teary blur to see Simon standing red-eyed and stifling an unmanly sob. I passed him a tissue. Like a Brownie, I was prepared.

I felt sorry for the vet. It must be a hard thing to do – to turn up at people’s houses, kill their much-loved animals, and maintain an unemotional and professional demeanour, whilst not coming across as callous or unfeeling. When it was all over, she stood up. “C’est fait.” We all stood for an interminable few seconds in heavy silence, staring at Max’s inanimate form. Then she briefly shook Simon’s hand, wished us a sombre “Bon Courage” and walked away. I noticed that she didn’t look back and wave a usual farewell as she turned her car at the gate entrance and drove off. She just quietly went and left us to our grief.

On the walk along the shady chemin to our pet cemetery, we reflected on the experience. Simon commented that, with a syringe full of stuff that powerful, you’d want to be damn sure you didn’t accidentally prick yourself. We were both struck by the speed and apparent painlessness of the process. A good way to go, if you had to choose.

At the rough land where our pet cemetery is located, I admired the beautifully dug hole. Simon thought it was probably bigger than it needed to be. It was just below the other graves, which are already grown over with grass and an assortment of commemorative weeds. We now have a chicken row, a cat row and a dog row. I remarked that, hopefully, we wouldn’t need to be adding to the dog row any time soon, but that I quite expected we would need to extend the other two rows at some point.

Rather than just tip Max’s body straight into the muddy hole, I thought we should wrap him in some kind of shroud. I don’t know why. It just seemed nicer, somehow. We decided to use the old cot-quilt cover that has served as a dog-bed cover for a few months. A colourful thing, printed with childish pictures of small animals and toy vehicles. But being too small to just wrap around him, I had the great idea of actually putting Max inside it. “He won’t fit that way round”, commented Simon as I began to manoeuvre Max’s uncooperative corpse into the open, short end. ” Yes he will”, I replied. “It’s just like putting on a quilt cover. I’ve had lots of practice. I know what I’m doing.”

Once Max was safely tucked away, with the final flailing limb stowed inside the cheery-looking material, Simon hefted the inert lump into the hole, and started shovelling the waiting pile of earth back into place. The soil was dark and sandy, and easy to work. When the hole was filled, and the earth stamped down into a proper grave-shaped mound, Simon searched around for a couple of sturdy sticks to mark the top and bottom of the grave.

“Which end was his head?” I asked, suddenly struck by a need to ensure that the biggest stick went in the right place. “This end,” Simon reassured me, as he skewered the longest stick into the soft soil. “Not that it matters. The sticks are only here so I don’t accidentally dig up the graves with the tractor when I’m mowing”.

Back at the house we sat outside with a glass of wine in the late evening sun, watching thoughtfully as the long shadows crawled across the yard and up into the trees.
“Oh well…” said Simon, profound as ever.
“Yeah…” I responded, knowing what he meant.
“Let’s not talk about it any more today.”
“Okay.”

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One Response to C’est fait

  1. Rest in peace Max…….

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