モカマウイ 番外編
あの日は、みんながロンドンにいました。珍しく、ピクニックに出かけることにしました。
最近は外ではみんなのそばをあまり離れないマウイでしたが、その日は珍しく、みんなから少し離れた場所まで一人でゆっくり歩いていました。
しばらくすると、マウイはMarieの膝の上で静かに丸くなっていました。
Marieは少し前かがみになり、マウイを優しく包み込むように抱いていました。マウイもその腕の中で静かに身を預けています。
家を離れてもう11年になるMarieの腕の中で、二人は何も変わらない時間を過ごしていました。
家族がそろって、犬がそばにいて、不思議なくらい何も変わらない、穏やかな午後でした。
翌日、マウイは私たちのもとを旅立ちました。
あちこちに持病を抱え、いつその日が来てもおかしくない状態ではありましたが、あまりにも急でした。
その翌日も、家の中は驚くほどいつもと変わりませんでした。
マウイは静かで、ただそこにいることで空間を満たしていたような犬でした。
一頭いなくなったというのに、家の中にはいつもと同じ時間が流れていました。
それが私には、とても不思議でした。
ただ、モカだけは違いました。
マウイがいた場所を一つずつ歩いて確かめていた。気がつけば、それはどれもマウイが好んでいた場所でした。
その日は夫のマラソン大会の日で、急に予定を変えることが良いとは思えず、予定どおり一日を過ごすことにしました。
その日のモカはなんだかとてもおかしく、急に若返ったかのように段差を軽々と飛び越え、プラムの上から飛び降りたりしていました。
それからしばらくの間、責任から解かれたかのようにリラックスした雰囲気になり、張り詰めていたものが少しずつほどけていくようにも見えました。
モカは私の中にある張り詰めたものに反応していたのかもしれません。でもそれは長くは続きませんでした。
やがてモカには急に老いが目立つようになってきたのです。
モカは「誰かを支える」という役目を持つことで、自分らしく生きていた犬だったのかもしれません。
その役目が終わったとき、初めて私は、モカもまたその役目に支えられていたのだと気づきました。
そして、もう一つ変わったことがありました。
それまでのモカには、ウィンストンが入り込む余地はほとんどありませんでした。
マウイとの時間が、モカにはあまりにも当たり前だったのだと思います。
でも、マウイがいなくなってから、その関係は少しずつ変わっていきました。
以前なら入れなかった場所に、ウィンストンが自然にいるようになったのです。
日本人のためのRP音声学専門家/発音矯正専門家。
指導歴40年、累計指導実績10,000件超。
発音矯正をしながら動物福祉と外から見た日本のの啓蒙活動を行っていますCafetalk: https://bit.ly/3Lfaxo2
ストアカ: https://www.street-academy.com/steachers/811397
That Day
That day, everyone was in London. On a rare occasion, we decided to go out for a picnic.
Maui had lately been staying close to us when we were outside, but that day, unusually, he wandered a little way off on his own, walking slowly, at his own pace.
After a while, Maui had settled quietly into Marie’s lap, curled into a small circle. Marie leaned slightly forward, holding him as though she were gently folding herself around him. Maui rested in her arms without resistance.
Marie had left home eleven years ago. In her arms, the two of them were somewhere outside of time — as though nothing had changed at all.
The whole family together, the dog nearby, an afternoon of impossible stillness.
Maui left us the following day.
He had been carrying a number of chronic conditions, and we knew that any day might be the day. Even so, it was far too sudden.
The day after, the house was remarkably unchanged. Maui was a quiet dog — one who filled a room simply by being in it. And yet, with one dog gone, the same hours seemed to move through the house as always. That, I found strange beyond words.
Only Moca was different.
He went from place to place — each one a spot Maui had favoured — and stood there, checking. As though confirming something.
That day happened to be my husband’s marathon, and it didn’t seem right to upend the plans, so we carried on as arranged.
Moca was not himself. He moved like a younger dog — leaping lightly over steps, launching himself off the plum tree. Something wound tight in him seemed, little by little, to be coming undone. As though he had been released from a duty he had long been carrying.
Perhaps he had been responding to something wound tight in me. But it didn’t last long.
Before long, age began to show in Moca — suddenly, visibly.
Moca may have been a dog who found his own way of being through the role of supporting someone else. When that role ended, I understood for the first time that the role had also been supporting him.
And there was one more change.
Until then, there had been almost no space for Winston in Moca’s world. Maui had simply taken up too much of it — not out of conflict, but out of habit, out of years. After Maui was gone, that began to shift. Winston started appearing naturally in places he had never been before.
Appendix: What Did Moca Know?
Research has confirmed that dogs who survive the loss of a companion animal show measurable changes in behaviour. In a 2022 study published in Scientific Reports, Federica Pirrone and colleagues at the University of Milan surveyed 426 dog owners and found that 86% reported behavioural changes in their surviving dog following the death of a companion. Reduced appetite, withdrawal from play, increased closeness to their human — these responses have been documented as paralleling human grief.
[Pirrone et al., Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) grieve over the loss of a conspecific, Scientific Reports, 2022]
What is particularly striking is that it was not the length of time the two dogs had spent together, but the quality of the relationship between them, that predicted the depth of the surviving dog’s response. Dogs who had been close, who had eaten and played together, showed stronger reactions. It is as though the surviving dog carries the relationship itself in the body — not merely the fact of an absence, but the specific weight of who is gone.
Why do dogs respond this way? Researchers have described it as an extreme form of separation anxiety, while also establishing that it cannot be reduced to a simple reaction to human emotion. The bond between the two dogs — that bond itself — persists in the one who remains. This is what the accumulating research is beginning, slowly, to make visible.