As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve never been good at letting things go. Oliver was always good at it. He’d mourn for a bit and then he’d move on somehow, but I never figured out how he did it, especially when someone I loved would pass.

I lost Duncan the summer I’d had him fifteen years, almost on the exact date he’d been delivered to me. Duncan had been lively and strong until the end, but the last few months of his life he’d started having strokes. They were small ones, ones he recovered from quickly. They’d take him off balance, but after re-hydrating him and giving him a vitamin, he’d perk up and go chasing rabbits off into the wood as if he were still a pup. Then, toward the end, I found him in the middle of a fit. When he came out of it, he walked sideways and was nearly blind. Still, he didn’t seem to be suffering and he was more than content to lie beside somebody and have his ears rubbed, so Oliver and I decided it wasn’t time to have him put down. I wasn’t ready to part with him anyway, but I was slowly working on preparing myself for the inevitable. Duncan was dying. It was only a matter of time until he did and I knew it.

I woke up in the middle of the night one night to the whispers of the elves. I lie there and listened, unable as always to make out a word that they said. Still, something told me that I needed to go into the living room, so I climbed out of my bed and walked along the cool floorboards into the front of the cabin. I heard an odd noise, a sort of raspy snort, and flipped on the light to see my little dog lying on the couch, twitching. It was obvious that there was something terribly wrong.

“Oliver!” I called as I knelt beside my dog, “Oliver! Come quick! It’s Duncan!”

Oliver was beside me in a flash. He put his hands on Duncan’s chest, turned him, and put his ear against his side. When he lifted his head, his face was stone serious. He turned his dark eyes to me and shook his head. “Hold him, Sil,” He whispered, “Sit with me on the sofa and let’s hold him.”

He didn’t need to say any more. I lifted my ancient Scottish terrier into my arms and I cradled him like a baby. I ran my hands over his smooth fur and kissed his little face. I watched my tears land in his beard and stick. I wiped them away. I watched him take short, shallow breaths. Over a few hours they gradually became more and quieter until they were faint. It took me a few minutes to realize it when he stopped breathing all together, but I know that Oliver knew it the second it happened because I heard him crying softly behind me.

“Oh my,” I whispered as I ran my hand over Duncan’s smooth fur, “He’s left us, hasn’t he? Duncan‘s gone away.”

“I’m sorry,” Oliver whispered harshly. He cleared his throat, “It’s just his time.”

I put my hands over my face, but I didn’t cry right away. I couldn’t decide if it were sorrow or relief I felt that he was gone. I decided that it was both, but those are two emotions that are difficult to feel at the same time. They don’t mingle well. Ollie put his arms around me from behind and cradled me like a child, rocking me gently from side to side.

“He was so old!” I bawled. “He was the best dog ever!”

“I’m so sorry. Yes, Sil, Duncan was the best dog that ever lived. My God, we had him longer than we’ve had Caro!” He shook a little.

We sat there like that for a time, Oliver holding me and me holding my poor old dog, both of us weeping quietly so we didn’t wake the children. Finally, about the time the sun was on the rise, Oliver told me it was time to bury our pet.

I allowed him to take Duncan from my arms. He lovingly wrapped him in the blanket he often slept on by the stove and carried him out to a shady corner in the garden. Just before the tree line where the deer often stood and watched us, he began to dig a hole. I sat on the porch with a rag and I sobbed as I watched him plunge the shovel deeper and deeper into the Earth. Finally, he took our ancient Scottish terrier into his arms and he kissed him gently on his old face before he placed him in the ground. Then he removed his t-shirt and laid it across him before he began to refill the hole with dirt.

When he was finished, he came and he sat beside me and neither of us said a thing.

The children woke a few hours later. I let Oliver tell them that Duncan had found his rest. We both went with them out to the place where he was buried. We both hold them while they cried. Losing Duncan to them was the same as losing a brother. They’d never known a day without the old bloke, they’d never spent a night without him sleeping beside one of them on their bed. They’d never known death before losing him, not one of them, and it was devastating and confusing and painful. I wished that I could do something, anything, to ease their suffering, but it was impossible to do through my own grief. I felt so selfish as I sat and cried with them, but maybe I really wasn’t. Maybe I was just teaching them that it was all right to be so sad you fell apart. Maybe they needed to know that it was OK to feel bad when you lost something you loved. Maybe I taught them that in life you can’t always be strong and that there are times when it’s perfectly acceptable and even expected, that you are so overwhelmed by emotional pain that you literally cannot stand.

Oliver was more solid. Still, with a heart as hard a pudding, he teared up from time to time and fought it away. Xander came over later in the day and took him out for a pint while Lucy and I bawled softly in the kitchen. Duncan had been a part of their lives, too, and his passing hit them as well as their children. When Nigel, Natalie, and the twins arrived with them it was a whole new round of tears.

It’s funny how animals become a part of your life, real and true as if they were your own flesh and blood. Oliver had gotten me that dog as a replacement for a child we’d lost. Even though we knew full well that he could never really take the place of our Cara, he’d filled a spot that needed filling and he’d helped us both to heal in ways that maybe we wouldn’t have as completely without him. We’d loved that dog as our child, given him the same attention and care that we had all of them. It seemed so unfair that we’d all outlive him, somehow strangely unnatural, even though we knew all along that we’d lose him sooner or later. It tore us apart at the gut, though. It wasn’t much different than it would have been if someone had come along and yanked a baby from our arms. We’d felt that before.

“He was a brave little bloke,” Gryffin sniffed. He was nine years old, his cheeks were splotched as he rested his head on Oliver’s shoulder, “He was about as tall as the cabbages and he’d go chasing deer out of the birdfeeders.”

“Yeah,” Xander smiled, “Barking his brains loose while those wee little stumps he had for legs were just going and going. Imagine if he’d ever got one! Poor, brave ole li’el Dunky-doo.” He shook his head and continued. He spoke loudly as if he were reading from a book, “Fearless Dunkers, defender of bird feeders and mighty conqueror of various dinner scraps! Lord of the Food Bowl and Champion of the Water Dish…” It took me a second to realise he was being funny. “Blimey, he was so old he smelled dead a year ago!”

“He was older than that,” Oliver agreed, “And he did smell of rotten potatoes at the end.”

“’e was older dan God’s granddad!” Gryffin replied with a grin, though his eyes were still red and watery, “That li’el ole Hunky Dunky-doo!” He dropped the accent, “We were lucky to have him for so long. We really were. He actually died six years ago. If he hadn’t swallowed that battery when he ate the pink rabbit…”

“Now that’s a lad,” Oliver smiled and messed his son’s hair.

We all sat together for a while on the stoop. None of us had any inclination to eat supper.

We eventually recovered from the loss of our beloved Duncan. A few weeks later Oliver asked us if we’d like to have another pet, since all we had left were two cats and the spotted grey and white goat, Tangwystl.