The tiny dog that healed a heart full of grief
MEMOIR EVERYBODY DIED, SO I GOT A DOG by Emily Dean (Hodder £16.99)
WHEN Emily Dean was young, she dreamed of having a dog, but, most of all, of living in a ‘dog family’. The sort of families that have dogs, you see, are normal.
They have routines, their houses are tidy, they budget ‘for phone bills, insurance policies and food for the freezer’. And with their dog, ‘the whole family would settle down to watch David Attenborough’s Life On Earth before bedtime’.
Life at home in the Dean family was totally different: rackety, disorganised, Bohemian, and lived to an accompaniment of drama, unpaid bills and fourletter expletives. Instead of Rice Krispies for breakfast, Emily and her sister, Rachael, might eat leftover canapés from a party the night before. This was definitely not the kind of home where dad would remember to buy dog biscuits.
Emily’s father, Michael, was a hugely famous pioneer of arts television, working with Joan Bakewell on Late Night Line-Up and making documentaries — always masking his semi-detached selfishness with pretentious quotations. Her mother, Christine Collins, an actress, seemed to be a rather sad figure whose career (such as it was) had been derailed by the arrival of two children.
One of life’s perpetual understudies, who believed her agent was always about to call, she veered between ‘Night-time Mum’ (who smoked and drank and screeched in dressing rooms), and cuddly, loving ‘Daytime Mum’. Says Emily, ‘The two characters seemed to be stuck in an eternal tussle.’
And then there was beautiful Rachael — Emily’s adored older sister, the stable one, who would go on to create her very own dog family. An adored wife and mother, her life was cut brutally short by cancer when she had everything to live for.
Emily is now the only survivor of this extraordinary family — her parents died three years after her sister. The title of her funny, sparklingly honest and heartbreaking memoir pulls no punches. It is a defiant statement that refuses to tiptoe around grief. It contains misery and happiness in one phrase.
When Emily was 13, she came home from school to find a letter on the doormat from her father. He was on a plane to New Zealand, allegedly for the sake of his career. ‘I am sorry not to have told you in person’, he wrote, and hoped that one day she would forgive him.
Shocking to read, this anecdote (told with Emily’s trademark breeziness) is a reminder that Michael’s favourite poet Larkin was dead right in his summation of what some parents do to their children.
The following year, her mother landed a small acting role in Australia and left the sisters with two different families; their
cat Treacle was rehomed. Their father’s many infidelities now out in the open, the girls had to tolerate — on a rare visit — his praise of his new girlfriend’s children. Emily’s judgment on his behaviour is all the more devastating for being lightly expressed. As you read, you admire her more and more.
The sisters take different paths — Emily lurches through relationships and lives a glamorous life as a journalist; Rachael settles down with Adam, has two children and gets Giggle the dog.
Then comes ‘something terrible’. The account of her sister’s diagnosis, death, funeral and the aftermath is written with moving control, dignity and beauty — yet it’s clear Emily’s grief and rage pushed her close to the edge.
Rachael’s dog proves to be ‘important in the healing process’ . . . but Emily isn’t ready for her own canine friend yet. First, she has to endure the death of her mother from motor neurone disease, and then the sudden loss of her (still estranged) father after a stroke. Just one of those bereavements would tax most of us; Emily Dean buries all three of her family members near each other — then is forced to process her complex feelings.
The result? She signs up for a retreat that takes her to the deepest levels of healing and forgiveness. She learns to stop blaming and even love herself. And — hooray! — she finally gets a dog: Raymond the Shih tzu. This is proof that, at last, she can accept her past and move forward, dog-lead in hand, to buy dog biscuits.
The finale of this rather wonderful book — where she smuggles Ray into the cemetery to meet her family — is so endearing it had me in tears.