Even The Curlews Cried.

I had no idea of the emotional storm brewing, just the feeling of impending doom and then it happened. I'd woken up that morning feeling strange, not right. What unfolded that day will forever ricochet inside me, just a scratch under the surface.

I inherited Jake when my nineteen-year-old daughter died. It was a miracle that he had not been in the car with her that day, normally she took him everywhere. He knew she wasn’t coming back; he knew that we had lost her. Dogs grieve too. In the aftermath, we struggled through some very dark days together.

When the news of Jemima’s death reached me that day, the pain that racked through my chest was disabling. Slow motion dragged me backwards with every step that I attempted forwards, mentally and physically. The right side of my head was burning, pounding. Anger and grief raged. It lacerated every part of me from within. All I could do was request three things and I had to have them.

Those things were, Jake, her beloved Border Collie, her laptop and her professional camera. Jake was her baby, her pride and joy. To be told he was not in the carnage gave me “something” to hold onto and I knew that wherever Jake was at that moment, he would need me too. Her camera was something that she used daily, captured within it would be the life we had missed, during our time apart the last few months. The laptop would have the only copies of her work, achievements and battles, also her music. I didn’t want anyone messing with them. With all the energy I could gather I managed to convey my needs to the swarm of family and friends around me. I begged them to find her good camera, the one with a curlew logo on the leather case. Breathing was difficult, my words barely audible and my heart was fragmented into shards that would never fit back together again. Even my skin hurt. I had no bladder control, but I didn’t even know that at the time.

Jake arrived. He was delivered along with the camera and laptop. All picked up from the room Jemima was renting. The room she would never return to. Jake was scared and bewildered, unsure of the heaviness and disbelief that hung in the air. He was instantly pinched up with a heave line that was clearly visible along each of his flanks. He was chattering in distress, under his breath, eyes searching the room for my daughter, his mom. The moment he caught sight of me he threw himself in my direction, clung to me and cried. I clung to him and I howled uncontrollably…….

Daylight arrived again, somehow. Jake and I dragged ourselves out into the first light. We had to evade our equally distraught family and friends. We had to find the place. We needed to “just be” at the crash site. We found it and silence engulfed us as we stood in the shifting light which revealed the skid marks, the gouged tarmac, the shattered glass brushed against the kerb entrapping a receipt for her favourite chocolate. Dated yesterday it fluttered in the breeze. As I stood weak, shallow breathing and vomiting air, Jake sniffed and crawled across the tarmac on his belly, whimpering louder and louder. The injustice and insanity of it all still filled that place with silent screams….a single curlew appeared skimming the field alongside the road and mourned pitifully .

For three long days no one would tell me where she had been taken. All they would say was “She’s gone”. I thought they must have taken her to Hereford or Aberystwyth morgue. I needed to SEE her. Why could no one understand that?! Why was that being ignored. It had been three days; it was Sunday now. Jake and I sat in my car outside the undertaker's shop. Everywhere was deserted, the town was still asleep. Neither Jake or I could eat or rest. For some reason I literally could not drive past the door of the undertaker or past the village square, listening as the clock chimming each hour. We could feel her near. In the early hours of that day, I visited someone outside of the family, someone who I knew would tell the truth, someone who would not evade or dismantle my questions. The lady was sitting by the old Esse in her ancient kitchen. Her door had been left unlocked; she had been waiting for me. I had been right; Jemima she said was lying in the chapel of rest now. The undertaker had my daughter, here in the village. The undertaker was waiting for the official process to catch up, and he was preparing a time slot to offer the family a “viewing” of our loss……

In the days that followed, Jake lay in the hallway at home. He steadfastly watched the door refusing to move, listening for anything that may prove death wrong. I lay in bed, numb, weak and broken. I was sure that I would pass out and never wake up from this hell. Jake continued to pine. He lost weight and refused all tasty treats and fresh meats offered. He cried each day, he cried through the nights. He would only drink from the river, one of Jemima’s favourite walks but then he would not leave the riverbank, in case she was there somewhere. I sat, I smoked, we kept each other company in silence. We watched it go dark. For days, we watched the moon come up and we watched the sun come up, but she never came. Jake would wobble home behind me, pitiful. At four years old he now looked as though he had spent a lifetime working the hills, tied up to a cold kennel in all weathers as his thank you. I brushed and brushed him. Therapy for me and him. I was conscious of his ribs, spine and hips. His eyes were sunken; he was broken too.

A request arrived from the police asking me to collect Jemima’s belongings. It had not occurred to me that there would be anything to pick up. The car had been taken away and put into crash investigation storage. This was the first mention of “Items to be collected" as the request read, but it didn’t say what. So, I dragged myself out in the car and found my way to the reception at the vast police station, in a fairly local town. I went alone. No -one knew me on reception and there was no sense of care or interest, no discussion as the request slip was exchanged for a large black plastic rubbish bag. The bag was fairly heavy and well tied with duct tape at the top. I drove home back to the silence, in silence.

Jake sat with me looking at the bag on the lounge floor. We talked without speaking. These were the last things Jemima had around her when she died. I cut through the duct tape, knelt on the floor next to Jake and tipped the contents onto the carpet between us - and Jake screamed. One blood stained shoe, one broken and bloody belt. So many smashed C.D.’s. a bag of change, mostly copper all stuck together with congealed dry blood. Granules of windscreen glass. Her embroidered Agility Team coat, torn and almost un-recognizable. The full horror of what was in front of us was impacted by the utter stench. It was unbearable. Jake was inconsolable, he ran upstairs and hid under my bed, screaming and screaming. He was in such distress, I thought I was going to lose him too, there and then. I was faint, drained, on the edge and I could not stand his anguish in that moment. I shut him in the room he had taken refuge in, the curtains closed and a dim light left on. I sat on the landing and rocked myself to sleep with my back against the wall. I too wanted to hide under the bed, and I too didn’t want to go on.

I woke mid-morning the next day, cold and crooked. There was no sound from Jake. I limped downstairs knowing that I had to pull myself together and sort out the tragic debris, for his sake. I re-bagged the horror, cleaned the carpet and opened the windows, vomited, washed my face then went to find him. He had migrated onto my bed and was up by the headboard, hidden under my pillows. His breathing was shallow and his eyes were sticky. He looked a mere wisp of a thing now. God, if Jemima saw him like this…. She’d had him a beauty, full and heavy coat, gleaming. He used to have a skip in every trotting stride. He used to bound around in agility and follow the horses for miles as Jemima rode out at the weekends. Running warm water over my face flannel, I bathed his eyes and spoke softly. I didn’t even recognise my own voice; it had been days since I spoke. As I snuggled up to Jake, he stirred. He nuzzled me in return and rumbled quietly. He then started to suck at the dressing gown that I was still wearing - Jemima’s. We slept again, hours passed and when I woke it was dark again. Jake was for once asleep in a more settled state. I wriggled out of the dressing gown and left it with him. The answer was there.

I opened one of the boxes that Jemima had packed and stored in our garage, before she moved house. She had written on the box, almost as if she had known that it would not be her that unpacked it. “Stable yard stuff - would fit you mum” I pulled on a pair of her jeans and an old jumper. For some reason this was a comfort not an upset. I went back into see Jake, hoping my idea would work. He was sitting upright, looking at me. As I approached, he flopped down on his side into the pool of dressing gown, and I scratched his belly as he sniffed the sleeve of Jemima’s jumper. The sniffing became licks, which became little vocal squeaks and his tail attempted a wag. It was a start. It was pulling back from the brink, for both of us.

Over the days that followed we ventured out on longer walks. We picked at food together. We looked through Jemima’s photographs and read her diaries. Jake started to slowly regain weight and the heave lines that had threatened to be permanent, left his sides. I finally got down to just wearing Jemima’s scarf with my own clothes and Jake didn’t look back. Wearing Jemima’s clothes, around Jake had been a way for us to find our path through the impossible grief that her death had left in its wake.

Jake still tries to take my socks off when I’m watching T.V. - something Jemima had taught him to do for her. He also enters a room, turns around and shuts the door behind him. “Were you born in a barn?” was the jovial command Jemima had used to train him to do this. Jemima and Jake had been inseparable since she rescued him when he was six months old. His grief and pain after she died had been testament to that. He totally adored her as much as everyone had. The vets had been baffled. I look at Jake sometimes, knowing he has been absorbing my every move, and I wonder why Jemima had not taken Jake with her that terrible day. Then I remember. She left him to help me through this; without him I would have followed her….