• 4:35pm January 29th – One Year

    February 9, 2011 By in Reflections Tags: , , Leave a comment

    It’s hard to fathom a year since the moment Jemima died. Her beautiful, but now slightly cloudy, eyes closed and suffering no more. How can a moment in time cast such a shadow over everything hence? To the extent that a sight, sound or smell can stop me in my tracks as it brings back floods of memories, once happy but now painful, and knowing I will never experience the like of which again?

    The day the year came round started in an unusual fashion with an early hours return from an evening out that had ended at a lap dancing club. Daylight came far too early, not that I should have woken, but I was roused by the feeling of another panic attack. Alcohol can help bring on the symptoms so I had been told so I put the event down to that but in the midst of the tight chest and feeling of fear it’s not always a rational thought that wins the argument. With every attack the thought always surfaces from the deep of mind that perhaps this time it’s something more serious. After starting up from the sofa where I had crashed I tried to empty my mind, to relax, and started the deep slow breathing which I’d read that is the one thing you can do that is in your control. Panic attacks are physiological caused by the pyschological and the thoughts that an attack brings illogical so by concentrating on breathing you maintain some control over what is happening. Slowly the attack receded and I fell asleep once more.

    I woke around 7am as the sound of children resonated through the house. Physically I mostly felt tired and I had a slight headache but mentally I was aware. Aware of what this day was and what it meant. I had no preconception of how I would react on the day – only a sense of foreboding like the sight of a dank grey cloud over the horizon edging closer. The day progressed as any Saturday did but it felt different until eventually I found myself seated at my desk looking at photos of Jemima in a manner as if staring into space. As a wave of realisation of the cruelty of the passage of time grew I shrunk into my seat head in hands, my eyes leaking as they inevitably did. I became aware of comings and goings behind me but wasn’t able to discern who or what it might be until I heard the kitchen door bolt shut and a key was turned from the other side. I had been locked in and left alone to my ruminations. I cannot tell how long I sat there until the door opened again and lunchtime manoeuvres began and all became well again while I was distracted.

    As the hours toiled by I slipped again into silence and then, as two in the afternoon became three, into distraction. The time drew closer and I found myself clock watching, sitting and looking into space, oblivious to noise and conversation, and sometimes looking at the laminated black and white picture of Jemima on the notice board. Three became four and my mood darkened. I replayed the scenes from a year before in my head trying to figure out the sequence of events and the mistakes I had made. Four fifteen. Four twenty. Getting in the car to go to the vet. Jenni saying goodbye. Four twenty five. The decision. Four thirty five. The last breath…

    The moment passed. Jemima had now been gone for more than a year. The clock soon hit five and preparation for dinner time began. Distracted again I felt a sense of guilty relief. Relief that the moment had passed but guilty that I had offered no ceremony or dignified marking of the event save sitting and thinking of the loss of my base – I hope Jemima could forgive me that.

  • Losing Jemima Part One

    January 21, 2011 By in Life Story Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

    Hankley Common, it being close to home and often empty, became the walk of choice for Jemima and Jesse on those weekends that Christine deemed to share the task. All four of us would head out in the car taking the 5 minute drive towards Thursley and turning off at what was Truxford Farm. The excitement was always there for the dogs no matter how many times we walked Hankley and it was often difficult to restrain them from leaping out of the car before the door was fully open and you had extracted yourself from the seat. One particular walk became something of a nightmare scenario however. We decided to take a new route around some dense woodland beside a horse trail. It was not a route we had taken before but we had no reason to be fearful as we often tried new paths and tracks. We walked along the wide sandy horse trail and came to another dirt track heading into the wood, wide enough for a car, and we turned right into it. Jesse as usual had charged off in another direction but a quick shout was all it took to catch his attention and for him to come back. Jemima, again as per normal, was a little way behind as she sniffed her way along investigating every smell. We continued up the track on a slight incline and after a short distance we stopped and looked back. Jemima had turned into the track so we assumed she had noticed us. We turned and carried on eventually reaching the other side of the wood. Once again we stopped to check Jemima was tagging along behind. She wasn’t there.

    We waited for a minute or so issuing the usual mixture of shouts for her to come. She didn’t come. I shouted louder but with no joy so we turned back down the track in the direction we had just come from eventually reaching the horse trail but with no sign of Jemima. We called some more but to no avail. It wasn’t abnormal to lose sight of Jemima or Jesse but I started to feel uneasy. We walked back up the track calling intermittently but nothing. It had been perhaps twenty minutes since we last saw her which was more unusual. I began to get those irrational premonitions that she was gone, really gone. This in turn initiated a conflict between logic and fear, between “she can’t have gone far” and “she could be anywhere by now”. Christine and I split up to cover more ground and I began to run, stopping every thirty seconds or so to call Jemimas name and to listen and scan the wood or the open valley of Hankley. Christine was doing something similar but I noticed that within a minute or two Christines voice became fainter until I couldn’t hear her calling. This made me think that perhaps the trees were acting to muffle our calls and Jemima could potentially not hear either of us. I carried on running and calling trying to cover as much ground in the vicinity as I could. I eventually half circumnavigated the wood and met Christine coming the other way. We then took off separately again in new directions. It was now around fifty minutes since we had last seen Jemima.

    We found her ten minutes later. She was pottering along the track that we had turned into an hour before and she was quite unperturbed despite my distressed greeting. What I could not work out is how neither Christine or I missed her on our search. We had covered the track through the wood from both sides and ran a couple of laps around yet she was found halfway up the track from where we had first turned into it. I felt relief washing over me as we walked back to the car this time not letting Jemima out of my sight.

  • First Christmas Without Jemima

    January 5, 2011 By in Reflections Tags: , , , Leave a comment

    25th December 2010

    I feel a connection, quite strongly, between all of the Christmas days of my life but it is a connection that I fear and endure. It is a familiarity, an echo even, or perhaps like an old friend returning sometimes unwanted. You know they are coming and there’s nothing you can do about it. So it continued with the first Christmas without Jemima. I suppose I could say that I wanted to feel the faint echo of her presence but when the day arrived all I felt was a dark hole. Of course I could look at old videos especially that of last Christmas when Jemima came along on our Christmas holiday away. Oddly enough the first video I played was that of Jemima carrying my croc and chewing upon it. As I watched I fingered the teeth marks that my croc still bore – evidence aplenty of her existence that now seemed so long gone. I turned the video off and sat with my head in my hands and did that which comes naturally – I cried.

  • The Hayling Island Incident

    December 17, 2010 By in Life Story Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

    Summer 2002

    Things were not going so well on the home front as differences in character between Christine and I started to show. I felt isolated at the best of times and an outsider in my own marriage. The same feeling in fact as I had on day one – my wedding day. I cannot say how precisely everything started going wrong but just that we never agreed on anything and the physical side of the relationship was becoming perfunctory and at times non-existent. It went further than that in that I could not even get close to Christine without her newly found fear of intimacy getting in the way. Where I felt I had a healthy attraction to my wife she felt I was too ‘grabby’ and intense. It got so bad that after a while I just completely left her alone and even then was accused of the same malfunction. It drove me away. The lack of physical intimacy led to me withdrawing my affection, after noticing she gave me none, and this led to lack of trust in all others areas of our relationship. She explained away her behaviour by saying that before she felt at ease, enough to get intimate, we had to get all the chores, home maintenance and mini improvement projects out of the way first. All of these tasks would be presented on a saturday morning and weekends would be spent working ‘the list’ – only the summation of hours required for the work always exceeded the hours available. In the circumstances I took that as a sign that she was avoiding the affection and closeness one would expect in a marriage – at least in it’s early years.

    Ultimately my age old theory of relationships being equations came back to mind – Christine and I didn’t add up – and I had no idea what to do about it – at least at first. In fact I began doing the only thing I knew how to do which was to try to please her which only led to reinforcement of the pattern we had established. There were never really any long series of arguments excepting the normal blowouts any couple has but there was definitely a downward trend in diplomatic relations. I felt false, confused, and caught between priorities. I was also caught out by Christines constant renegotiation of compromise that went something like this : an issue would come up and be discussed. Christine would have position A and I would have position B. After a discussion we would compromise a solution somewhere midway between A and B – call it C. Now fast forward a week or two at which point the issue would come up again except that now I was at C while Christine would revert to point A. A new compromise would be drawn up at the midpoint between point A and C. This pattern would repeat itself until she got what she wanted. After a year or so of this I had had enough and began assuming my original position on issues whenever she tried the renegotiating trick. I felt it wasn’t fair and I became purposefully belligerent. Eventually it became difficult to find anything we agreed on so I started avoiding discussing anything and began ‘doing’. This actually turned out to be the best way forward for me and I found a perverted balance where the more I was harassed about not doing what was on the list the more I rebelled and did my own thing. It was like being imprisoned with a lifetime supply of cake – it could be enjoyable but was ultimately bad for me.

    Fortunately having Jemima and Jesse meant that going for walks, especially ones with a long drive involved, was a perfect excuse to escape. Hayling Island therefore started to become a regular long distance destination that got me away for a few hours. At the time I had also started becoming interested in Kite Surfing which meant I purchased a couple of wetsuits and on my dog walking trips to the beach I would take my short wetsuit, get changed into it with tshirt and shorts over the top, and go swimming with the dogs. It was on one particular summer evening that the Hayling Island incident occurred.

    The walk began as any other but I decided on this occasion to swim across the tidal channel separating the beach and the large sandbank that stretched perhaps a mile out to sea. There were people out there already so I had no reservations about going over. Jemima, Jesse and I swam across and onto the sandbank and started walking out towards the sea. Jesse decided to charge the various small flocks of seagulls that had accumulated on the sand in various places while Jemima and myself walked side by side for a while. The sky was relatively clear and the evening sun was warm – it was idyllic. We explored various shallow pools and I chased Jemima and Jesse around. Over perhaps an hour and a half we ventured slowly but surely to the edge of the sea. After the initial burst of playtime I walked mostly head down looking at the sand as I trudged along while Jemima and Jesse ran and trotted around happy as ever to be running free. Eventually we came to the edge of the sea which was slowly and surely coming inland. The tide had turned. I stood admiring the sight of the small streams of water finding their way along inch by inch through the small ridges of sand remembering doing the same as a young child on the beaches of Hunstanton. I was relaxed and at peace with the world. I stood contented watching the sun going down with Jemima and Jesse pacing around exploring sand and sea. I stood transfixed at the scene before I casually turned to take in the vista of the shoreline that was perhaps a mile behind us. It was then that I saw.

    The tide had come in behind us. What I saw in front of me was a mile of water with only small isolated islands of the sandbank protruding out of the sea. I didn’t panic but was immediately worried about the situation I now found myself in. I called out for Jemima and Jesse and began to run. I remember seeing Jemima look up, notice the sea in the same way as I had, before starting after me. The water was shallow at first, perhaps ankle deep but after 50 yards started getting deeper before we started hitting the deeper pools. I was able to run, albeit slowly, through the pools but Jemima and Jesse had to swim. Jemima had already been slowing down on the walk so it started to cross my mind that she may be very tired but now had a rather serious job ahead of her to get back to land.

    We kept going, I was wading by now in deeper water while Jemima and Jesse swam. I started to doubt whether Jemima could keep going and soon enough I began tiring too. It got to the point where I didn’t believe I would be strong enough to be able to rescue her, to carry her back, if she got into trouble. The sun had now set, it was getting darker, and there was no one else on the beach. We carried on as fast as we could – we had to.

    After about half a mile we got a reprieve. The water started becoming shallower and the dogs were able to run again in a leaping fashion but I could see that Jemima was very tired just by her action. Jesse was cruising along still so I wasn’t concerned about him. Luckily the water shallowed more still until it was only about a foot deep and thus became easier for Jemima to run through. We toiled on and narrowed the gap between us and the shoreline until we had perhaps 150 yards left. In front of us now lay what had earlier been the relatively narrow tidal channel but was now very wide and very deep. Without pausing for breath we jumped straight in and started to make our way across. Within a few strides I ducked down into the water to swim. I was by this time very tired and as I looked over to my right I could see two black heads bobbing in the water as they too were swimming towards the shore. I was disturbed as a gap had started opening up between myself and Jemima as she seemed to be drifting to the right. I quickly surmised that as the tide was coming in from right to left she could get to me quickly if she got into trouble. I decided to check how deep the water was to see if I would be able to carry her. I let myself drop down under the surface to try to reach the bottom but quickly found that it was much deeper than my height – it was more than 10 feet deep. I surfaced again and could see Jesse motoring on with no problem but Jemima was slowing up. She had also drifted even further right perhaps as if she was stronger on one side. She was now much too far away for me to do anything if she went under. By the time I could get to her she would be gone. I tried to ignore the dark thought of Jemima drowning and swam on trusting she would make it.

    Jesse reached the shore first and started trotting up the beach as if nothing had happened. I got to walking depth and carried on slowly while Jemima carried on swimming slowly in. In fact she got to the waters edge before me, staggered up the sand, and shook herself off. I got in myself and went over to her – she seemed fine but was very tired. I looked out to sea and could find no trace of the sandbank that I had been casually walking on not 10 minutes before. It was dark by now and the lights in the car park were on. I sighed to myself and began to analyse whether, and by how much, that had been a close shave. We trudged up the sand at the waters edge and into the shingle and stones up the beach until we reached the top. Another quarter mile walk saw us back to the car and the journey home. I never told Christine what had happened – I didn’t trust her for what she might say.

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