Staying alive

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY

BC PIRES

BELLE, our beautiful big tan pothound, who stands almost at my waist height, is on her way out. She’s hardly getting up any more. At age ten, she’s already lived longer than most dogs her size, but now she’s literally on her last legs: the aggressive bone cancer that has reduced her right front leg to a fragile organic crutch will spread. Just to touch the leg even lightly in the wrong way now makes her yelp.

For the whole weekend, she lay without moving wherever I carried her and put her down. The pain was too great for her to even try to press her weight down upon the bad front leg, to try to get up. This golden wonder who had twice survived being thrown into an abandoned well (Bajan canine euthanasia), the alpha bitch of a six-dog household and the scourge of the postman’s motorbike, was motionless for three days. She did not even eat, just lay with her head flat on the ground, rolling her big brown cow eyes up to us, as if to say, “I think it’s time.”

On Sunday afternoon, with heavy hearts, we messaged the vet to come along and end her suffering. Thankfully, the vet did not receive the text. On Monday morning, the new painkillers we tried over the weekend finally kicked in. We woke to find she had pulled herself up on to the old couch in the night. Though her running days are over – to the postman’s relief – she can at least limp to and from her favourite places once again. So, for a few more days, perhaps weeks, if we’re lucky, she won’t have to go. My wife told our grown-up children in London that Belle had got a stay of execution.

The best jokes make you weep with laughter; and then make you just weep.

From my desk, I can see the cane fields she loves but will never explore again; I’ve already picked out the spot where I will dig the hole.

She must go, of course.

But what joy she brings us, just by being herself in the world, while she’s in it.

And how good it is, even if it is a little sad, to be reminded, while she’s still here, that we have her and one another.

What else are we living for, if not to make the little time we share a little better?

When the time does come, and it will much sooner now than I would choose, all the sadness of her leaving will not begin to threaten the joy she made inside the tears while she was here.

And how wonderful it is to do something to save a life that is not only far easier than toting around a 50-kilo dog, but a real joy?

Tomorrow night, from 6.30 pm at O2 Park, Chaguaramas, some of the best musicians we have ever produced will play Staying Alive, a benefit concert to underwrite the cost of a life-saving kidney transplant needed by my friend Danielle Diffenthaller, the woman who created and willed into being Trinidad’s definitive luxury TV soap opera, Westwood Park.

Who also happens to be the sister of Kes the Band.

Who plays tomorrow night. Hello? Hello? Hello?

Though the Monk, Machel Montano himself is likely to close the show (of course), Kes, the best soca-pop band in Trinidad, will have a special bond with their sister while playing. As will her old friends, 3 Canal, Trinidad’s best rapso band, Orange Sky, Trinidad’s best hard rock band and my own band flavour of the month/year/foreseeable future, Freetown Collective. And there will also be Sekon Sta, Nailah Blackman, Kernal Roberts, Preedy, Kimba Sorzano, Johann Chuckaree, Zan and the Trinidad All Stars.

That would be a great wake to go to but it’s going to be an even better Staying Alive concert. Certain songs from those bands – Savannah Grass, You (Give Me a Reason to Jump for Joy), Real Love – will blow audience minds, ears and hearts, in context, probably none more so than Space for a Heart.

If I were there, I would be there. Make sure you are. Even if all you’re thinking about is the party, even if you don’t give a flying firetruck about the good deed, you’ll get more than your money’s worth from the great music.

And Danielle will be with us for some time longer. And we’ll take and treasure every moment.

BC Pires is not so much decomposing but composing still as pining but opining still. See https://islandetickets.com/event/Staying-Alive-The-Concert