Saturday

Day Two of the emotional reset.

Lesley’s dad’s funeral arrangements had been concluded and her sister had returned home. She’d still been very much on our minds during yesterday’s walk with The Dog.

“Has she been a lot easier to handle since she finally admitted to you that she was in a total mess and wasn’t coping at all?” I’d asked.

She had. To be fair, Lesley had been able to get agreement on most of the important stuff. What had been so difficult was the constant “That’s a terrible idea! I don’t know how you could think such a thing!!” reaction to every single suggestion Lesley made. More often than not it would be followed 24 hours later by “You know, I think we should…”.

Whether or not any explicit acknowledgement that the original suggestion had been made by Lesley wasn’t shared with me. But I suspect it wasn’t.

But this morning we decided to give The Dog a decent long walk. We tried to work out a route that would avoid all the sections that were still too flooded. We thought about going over to Dad’s house because The Dog likes the walks over there and we could put his house back to bed for while it was going to be unoccupied. Perhaps we could start some tidying and sorting. But the last attempt at a walk there had been ruined by people firing their shotguns and terrifying The Dog. Being a Saturday we thought that was likely to happen again. We decided to just let The Dog choose a route and play it by ear.

The Dog took us out, relieved herself and turned round.

“Where’s she going?”

“I think she’s going back home. That’s weird. I didn’t hear anything.”

When we got home The Dog’s plan was revealed. She stopped on the drive, looked at the car and then looked at us.

“Ah. She wants an adventure!”

We went to some woodland that we haven’t been to since, well, since my Mum was first taken ill. You have to walk across some football pitches to get to it from the car park. The Dog was running around like an absolute loon. She does this forward roll thing where she runs along and then throws herself over her shoulder and her tail hits the ground with a mighty thwack. Then she gets back up with an expression that looks like she’s laughing and does it again. She did it a lot. When we got into the trees she wanted to run in every direction at once. I just needed to say her name to get her to look at me and point in the direction I wanted her to go. It worked instantly every time. She didn’t overreact to other dogs, kids on bikes or a kid on horseback. She was perfectly behaved the entire time and wonderful company.

It didn’t strike me until we got home that her recent struggles with mood and behaviour could well have been her mirroring our emotions and our struggles.

“I can’t believe he’s gone. I just feel empty and lost.” Lesley had said this morning.

I have to admit that I did too. Immediately after my Mum had died, Lesley’s dad’s health started a really serious dip. My attention went immediately from dealing with her death to supporting Lesley as she coped with her dad and her sister. Dad went into a nursing home the week after Mum’s funeral. A walk in the spring sunshine with a joyful dog was a great way to start putting that all behind us.

Author’s Note

My Mum was in a nursing home in the Thames Valley for a year and a half until she passed away in December 2024. My Father-in-law went into the same home the following January. But Lesley’s sister didn’t approve and made the situation so awkward that he had to be moved. The image is not of the home itself. I used AI to generate an image of a typical modern nursing home. Names and locations have been changed or hidden to protect the identities of those involved. Which, for the new home, is probably just as well.