Do You Know What VAD Is?
Most mornings I walk my dog, Cosmo, down to my local cafe for a coffee. It's one of those small routines that doesn't mean much until it does.
About three months ago there was an older woman sitting there when we arrived. Cosmo walked straight up to her for a cuddle, the way he does, and it turned out she had treats in her bag. From that day on she was his favourite person in Pyrmont.
I started seeing her almost every morning, and she always made sure she had something for him. She called him Cozzie. She'd always had dogs. She showed me photos of her last one, a Rottweiler who died of cancer a few years back, and you could tell she still missed him.
You could also tell, just by looking at her, that she'd lived a big life. Over those mornings she told me bits of it. She was abandoned as a child. She married an American and lived in the US for a while. She had money, then lost all of it. She served in the military. She'd been homeless. There was more, and I suspect a lot she never got around to telling me.
A couple of weeks ago I walked in and she told me to take a seat. So I did.
"Do you know what VAD is?"
I didn't. She explained it stood for voluntary assisted dying. She had cancer and a few other conditions that could no longer be treated, and she'd been living with constant pain for about ten years. She'd decided she couldn't do it anymore, and she'd chosen when she would go.
Then she invited me to her send-off lunch at a local pub.
I went. The place was full. The owner of the cafe was there, and he's a genuinely good guy. The guy who runs the bottle shop next door. My barber was there too; he'd been cutting her hair as well. I'd had a haircut a few days earlier, and we'd swapped stories about a lovely old lady from the cafe without realising we were talking about the same woman. Other locals I'd seen around for years without knowing they were connected to her. For someone who'd been abandoned as a kid and had been homeless, she'd ended up with a whole neighbourhood of people who cared about her. It was an emotional afternoon, but she was happy. Properly happy.
After she told me, I made sure I took Cosmo to the cafe every single day. It was the one thing I could do that I knew made her light up.
Thursday just gone was her last day.
I met her at the cafe like always. A few other people were there to say goodbye. We had a chat. I told her I understood her decision and wished her all the best, and then we hugged. Before I left she pressed ten dollars into my hand so I could buy Cozzie some treats.
Cosmo has no idea what's happened. Every time we walked into that cafe he went straight to her, tail going, and she'd be just as excited to see him. He still looks for her when we walk in, and she isn't there.
I've been thinking about all of this constantly since she first told me, and I'm not sure I've landed anywhere neat. A few things have stuck with me, though.
How little we know about the people we see every day. I'd been sharing a few minutes with her most mornings for months before I knew any of her story, and I still only know a fraction of it.
How much a small ritual can matter. A dog, a bag of treats, a coffee. It wasn't much, but it was something she looked forward to, and so did we.
And how she went out on her own terms. She'd spent a decade in pain. She chose the day, gathered her people for a long lunch at her local, and said her last goodbyes over coffee. I don't think I'd ever really considered what a good ending could look like until I watched her plan one.
I'll buy Cosmo his treats with her ten dollars. He won't know where they came from. I will.