#my mom’s incessant need to send me old photos of myself when I was very female presenting

[thyknife]

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[sallyannthearts]

Hugo

In Loving Memory of Hugo

I’d just woken up with a tried motivation to live in the moment in spite of the ongoing confinement. 24 days it has been for now and still counting. Fun, our days can be fun, even if my future seems very hazy. I danced about the kitchen making myself a cup of coffee. Waking up with a positive spirit these days was a little harder but today was going to be a movie marathon day where I treated myself to some couchpotato luxury.

Then I heard the news. Hugo, my dog of 13 years, had just left us for Dog Heaven.

The words on my phone were composed into a direct arc to my heart. My walls came up as I sat down with my partner to call my family. Hugo lived in a cosy garden at my mom’s back in Kuala Lumpur, the hometown that my sister and I had traded off long ago. The only person who was at his side most of the time now was my mother, who was also frequently subjected to guilty treatments by him whenever she left for long holidays. Hugo was used to being on his own by then and seeing people come and go; the lady who spoke not a word of his language but came with good tidings of food whenever his mistress wasn’t around, the postman who dropped letters without getting off his motorbike, the cats who all hid over the wall beside… Hugo must have known not to put his hopes up when it came to seeing me again.

Everyone in the family was somewhere on the other side of the ocean. It took a while to connect. But those short ten seconds were enough to knock my poor defensive walls down. The tears came in a gush as I realised just how much Hugo meant to me. Now I really wanted to see him. I wanted to know what was happening because something was not computing in my head. He was dead? Yes, he was and I knew that this day would come. Still, in the back of my mind, it had always been postponed to tomorrow.

The last I had seen Hugo was during a short trip back for Christmas in 2018. I had spent more time sitting outside on the bench with him; the bench that he already had trouble climbing though it was as low as a stone. Hugo would always ignore me the first few moments, looking away as I called his name. When I tried to pull him closer to me for a photo, he’d looked the other way, almost in a scoff. Hugo had the right to feel as such. Over the years I had forged a distance between us. It didn’t help that we had adopted him during my young adulthood times of crisis, burning with needs to explore the world and its meaning. Nobody stayed put at home during those years, Hugo.

This last time I saw you had been different though, wouldn’t you agree Hugo? I sat outside with you and took many photos of you. I didn’t want to go back inside the house. Mosquitoes came at me but I resisted. I wanted to prolong the time I had with you, even though I kept saying I’d be back and you’d still be there. I sincerely believed you’d still be there. You let me stay, probably knowing too, you and I. You were already so old, your fur was white and marked with everyone’s destined kidnapper; age and death would bind you to them in the end, we denied this secret between us. We sat outside, I hugged you tight, no matter the stench. I hugged you very tightly. You looked at me then and licked my face. I laughed and saw the young Hugo again, the dog, maybe my last which I had unconsciously averted spending too much time with. You never knew how I put a photo of you up right beside my bed. I didn’t desert you, Hugo.

I asked about him over the weeks. My mother reported of his strange new behaviour of sitting out in the rain that he hated and just looking into the distance as he got soaking wet. It was so bad that my mother had to lock him up whenever it poured. Maybe he was being as dramatic as his faraway owner, sending a signal to have us prepared. Still, I didn’t come. And I couldn’t use the confinement as my excuse to not have flown over immediately, not exactly. I was getting worried but ignorance was bliss.

The ritual was there, the ignoring before the accepting. His initial grudge would dissipate as I combed his tattered skin, battered by some dermatological disease that Beagles were prone to. My mother would feed him and I watched him gobble it all up. He was an energetic dog who barked louder than I belted. He smelled food yards away, wrapped in a film-tight plastic without even seeing it.

Then it’d be time to say goodnight, just another day for Hugo. Maybe it didn’t matter that those times were special days when I was only home for a visit. After all, there were times I didn’t even want to pet him as I came home, there were times when he didn’t even see me for months. He was used to his cold mistress, wasn’t he? His incessant barks didn’t quite matter anymore. His skin left a very strong stench, so over the years, the caresses became even lesser. Sometimes, if it had been long enough, I gave him a pet or two before going inside to take a shower; the hypocrite.

This morning he woke up to a troubled stomach but he didn’t complain. Then during a short hour when my mother wasn’t with him, he fell to the side beside the corner of the house near the entrance as if into a slumber. He didn’t even prepare us. I hoped he died in his sleep peacefully. After all the suffering with your skin problems and old age, I really hope you took that last breath tranquilly.

I’m sorry, Hugo. I was just a passing figure in your memory. I sat down to write this, hoping to conjure back memories of us but I can barely. I only know that your passing is resurging tears inside of me. I loved you, Hugo. I love you, my last dog.