Memento Mori: A Good Death

Labrador Retriever Turns Clock Re-Setter

By Stephen Potts

As usual, Todd’s dog gave him no choice but to go out. Today’s weather brought variety to the otherwise familiar clifftop walk, as a blustery wind forced bursts of rain between splashes of sunlight. Murray thrust his grizzled jaws at his master’s throwing hand, drawing an expression of disgust as the slobbery ball touched flesh. Murray did not care; he knew Todd’s reluctance faded once he was on his legs and through the door.

Photo by Stephen Potts

I get my best ideas here, Todd said to his university colleagues. He had not told his (now ex-) wife that they did not come when she was present. These days he was alone all the time, and ideas often didn’t come at all.

Still expecting fresh lectures for the first years, his professor had sprung a new subject on him. “A Good Death?” What the hell do I make of that? was Todd’s unvoiced reaction.

He threw Murray’s ball back towards his cottage, low amid the scented gorse. He’d been happy here, at least at times. She must have been too, the way she fought to keep it, when the lawyers thrashed out their divorce. They’d settled on joint ownership. He wondered with whom she shared her time there, the first and third weekends of the month. He only ever took Murray, and she had wanted neither their dog nor their flat in town.

A Good Death. He’d need a gimmick, and had settled on a Death Clock. They’d enter their age, sex, height, weight and lifestyle variables, and an app would pronounce their expected date of death to a chorus of nervous titters. Todd had not laughed when he entered his own data yesterday. Sixteen years left, even after playing down the alcohol and denying the fags. These kids had 60 years or more ahead, and for them 16 months felt eternal. So, was the clock enough?

Salted wind tugged his unruly hair, as ideas and phrases billowed through the neural thickets under his scalp. The outline of a lecture slowly solidified from a fog of uncertainty. Can you have a good death without a good life beforehand? Good for whom? Good in what way? Peaceful, pain-free, and bathed in love —well, of course. Not too soon, in the full bloom of youth, nor too late, in decrepit isolation, predeceased by everyone. Neither too quick nor too slow. There should be time for reflection, for final words, for making sense of what went before. But who wished to see boredom in the eyes of those loved ones who showed up at the death bed?

At the gate to the clifftop path, he pocketed the ball. Murray went ahead, leaving Todd to gaze through wind-narrowed eyes at the sea. A blue-grey swell in the distance, speckled with whitecaps: seething surf at the cliff-foot below. Sixteen years. Retire in five. Then what? Hang around the department like a lost cause? Start drinking at lunchtime as well? Get another dog once Murray was gone? Maybe my last one, he’d told the vet nurse. And a spaniel next time: my Labrador days are done.

But when he came here, with no lectures to plan, no papers to write, what would he do? What would he think about, without focus or deadline to steer his reading? He now went entire weekends without talking to another human. He foresaw a future where this could extend to weeks.

Todd reached the stretch where erosion took the cliff edge uneasily close to the path. Usually he hurried past, eyes averted from the rocks below. Today he did not feel that flutter of fear. He stopped when the village came into view, to stare down and listen to the waves pounding the rocks. Booms as they hit, hisses when they withdrew. Gulls wheeled and called, soaring on the updraft. Todd felt drawn, almost hypnotised, by the giddy drop. He inched towards the edge. It would be so easy. A step: not even a jump. No room for second thoughts. No 999 call if you change your mind. A fierce downrush past surprised seagulls. An uprising of rock or surf. A sudden shock, too violent to feel.

And then?

Not silence. The booms and the hissing would continue, as the waves rose and fell. The gulls would still call, the wind still buffet the gorse.

Someone would find Murray, and call at his cottage. A concerned neighbour, perhaps the police, would walk the path and look down on his broken body. Then a recovery operation, led by Davey of the coastguard, who drank in silence with him in the village pub. Or they’d see nothing, until a lobster boat spotted his swollen corpse weeks later. Davey would call out the lifeboat, with postmistress Megan in the crew. Megan who ensured his many book parcels did not wait in the rain. Murray would moulder at the dog shelter up the coast. His ex wouldn’t want him. And nor would anyone else, now he was so gray around the muzzle.

Murray barked. Anxious? Angry? Or did he just want his ball back?

Todd pictured his funeral. His ex-wife would soak up sympathy but remain dry-eyed. Alison, if she heard about it, would come, and shed tears unnoticed in the corner. His first love. The one he should have —

Murray barked again, as if to snap him out of such self-indulgence.

Todd’s stammer returned, as it did when he grew irritated.

“Oh Mem-mem-en Murray,” he muttered.

But his anger evaporated as he felt an idea spark inside him. Do dogs know that one day they will die? Yes, they feel fear in the face of imminent death. But lying full-bellied by the fire, do their thoughts drift to what comes after? Are we unique in this knowledge? His students would miss their dogs and cats back home. If they couldn’t contemplate their own death, he’d make them think about their pets passing. Now he had a way into his lecture.

He lifted his gaze from the cliff edge.

“Memento Mori,” he said to himself and his dog. “Remember you must die.”

He set off home, ball in hand, Murray racing ahead.

“But not today.”