Life's surreal moments

Remarkable how a household filled with four children, one husband, two dogs, a cat, a tortoise, and our Top Banana Claire can feel lonely. I miss Banger. He was a remarkable dog who survived an extraordinary amount. He got run over early on by drunk tourists. I was alone in the house when it happened. It was night, a dark, still, warm evening. I heard the car approaching, and I could hear Banger on the sandy track outside barking, and then I heard him screaming as the tourists with their rattling beers drove off at speed.

I carried him into the house, terrified in case his back was broken, or his skull was smashed. In the kitchen light I saw at once his hind leg had been run over, a bone was jutting out. We were awake most of the night. I just held him. There is no vet on the island I live on. There was nothing I could do till dawn when I took the first boat off the island, over to the airport. Carrying him in my back pack, I ran around seeing if there was any flight on the ground that we could get on. I was offered a ride on a small charter leaving for Nassau. I knew Banger was in terrible pain. He hardly moved. He didn't even whimper. In Nassau I went to the vet I knew. It was a Sunday, I had to beg him to see us. He took one look at the leg and said he couldn't help, this needed more than an x-ray machine. I would have to go to the States.

I dashed back to the airport and found the next flight to America. I called ahead to Dr. Wise, the aptly named vet who had been recommended to me. Dr. Wise met me at the clinic and operated almost immediately. Banger and I returned back to the island a few days later, his leg in plaster. Somehow over the next couple of weeks an infection crept inside and spread itself all over the limb. I could tell from the putrid smell that began to ooze from his cast. Banger returned to Dr. Wise. The infection had gone too far, too deep. The only option was to amputate his little paw. It was a long and difficult couple of weeks managing life between the kids on the island and Banger recovering in America. But he was a special dog, I knew it was worth it. He went on to live many happy years managing life as a three pawed sausage.

We buried Banger, yesterday, at sunset. We stood around his grave with our hand-made tombstone and the freshly picked flowers from the garden, and a little light that would shine on him for his first night, in his new resting place. Conrad was too distraught to speak. Banger had really been his dog. Felix spoke instead. Whenever he has faces dark times or difficult challenges in his life, he said, he imagines himself at the bottom of our driveway, the sun is shining. He begins to walk towards the house, and Banger comes galloping out to greet him. Beyond Banger he can see his family, his three brothers and sister and his parents, waiting at the top of the drive as he walks towards us all, towards home, with Banger, always there by his side.

When Claire called me to tell me that Banger had experienced a bad night, he had started bleeding from all the wrong places, I knew something serious was happening. I wanted to come home immediately. I wanted to hold him in my arms. But he died before a flight could even be booked, quietly, with no fuss, when Claire was out of the room.

We arrived home 2 days later. Claire had carefully wrapped our beautiful boy in his blanket, and placed him gently in her freezer. In writing this it seems strange. Banger inside Claire’s freezer but it made sense at the time. Most of us will probably be kept on ice whilst waiting for our funerals. Everyday before landing back on the island I would call Claire “How is Banger?’ I would ask “He has'nt moved much!" she would reply. Banger would have approved of our joke, he understood his English family’s humor.

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Conrad came with me to Claire’s. We lifted him out of the freezer and drove him back up the drive for the final time. Perhaps one of life’s more surreal moments. Holding my frozen dead dog in my arms as we rode through town. But he was still with me.

Lowering him into the ground was the moment I had to give him up, the moment we said good bye, the moment he was taken from us.