Bruce McCulloch - Tales of Bravery and Stupidity

 

 

Hello. For my wife and my kids and I, we've always really loved Halloween. And I think it's because we can put so much energy into our costumes. I usually dress in tandem with something with my son, Roscoe. I was Robin to his Batman. We went out as Hall & Oates. He was the handsome one, obviously. My wife went out as a Picasso painting. And in the year 1960, go figure. She's creative that way and it's one of her outlets. She doesn't have them off. And my daughter, Heidi, has gone out as a series of Disney princesses. But lately, she's grown tired of the Disney brand, which I really appreciate. So, we really love Halloween around our house except for last year.

 

We have a family pet, Lulu, a white standard poodle. But if you're trying to imagine her, we don't cut her all poodle-y. We just let her go. And she's a great dog. You just go, “Lulu.” And she'd run around. You could hear a little collar jingle. Well, in August, Lulu got sick. She had this little nosebleed that started kind of sporadically but started to gain momentum, and so much so that we decided to take her to the vet. He couldn't find anything. Still $70. And he looked at us and he said, “Oh, it's probably just nothing.” But in a way that in my head I heard, it's probably just everything.

 

And I wasn't paranoid. I was true, I was right. Because that nosebleed would not stop. It just kept going and going. We'd lie her on our bed on a towel, and she'd always lie on the other part of our bed. And we'd walk her to the park and her nose would bleed and using the drips, we could find our way back home like Hansel and Gretel. And then one day, she got up to go to the park. Her little collar jingled, and she fell down. She couldn't walk.

 

Now, anyone here who's ever had to wrap a pet in a towel or a blanket and rush it to animal emergency, I will spare you the gory details. Needless to say, that a couple pieces of bad news and an operation that didn't go as planned, our little girl was just hanging in. It was the next day. We were picking up our kids from karate class. We got the call from the animal hospital saying, “Your girl's in trouble. If you want to see her again, you better get here soon.” 

 

So, we had to figure out how to get our kids from karate class and get all the way across town, going full blast without letting them know how freaked out we were. We said, “Oh, those people at the animal hospital, they just need some money by the time the bank closes.” Which was kind of true. [audience laughter] And when we got there, I didn't know what I was doing. I just said, “Okay, she's probably asleep. We're going to go in. You kids, you just stay here.”

 

So, we went inside, and they took us into a room I'd never been in before. And there was our girl lying on a metal table. She had a tube from her paw and one in her mouth. And we said, “Hello, Lulu.” And she heard our voices. And her tail flinched. It didn't wag, it just flinched. She had the impulse, but not the strength. And our voices comforted her because she was blind now. And we looked at our dog, and my wife and I, and we knew it was all over but the ending. And that's why they called us to come and put her down.

 

So, we ordered the stuff, $70. And we stroked her ear. We whispered to her. We thanked her for all the love and all the cuddling, for starting our family. We always say she started our family because we got her a week before Heidi. And then, we held her before until we didn't have to anymore. Hardly a date night for me and my wife, but it was a shared activity, I guess you could say. Putting down my dog was the hardest thing I have ever done. My dad dying was a nuisance compared to this. [audience laughter] 

 

We went back to the car and got to the kids. And just as we got there, my wife said, “You tell them.” I said, “Okay. Guys, Lulu's gone to heaven.” My son said, “Bull [beep].” [audience laughter] He knows I don't believe in heaven and I'm a terrible actor at the best of times. And we just stood there, all of us crying and heaving and snot coming out our nose. No one knew how to lead this family. We didn't know what to do. So, we just went to McDonald's. [audience laughter] I guess that's why they're there. We drove straight through a drive-through. Happy Meals that really weren't. [audience laughter] My wife, wearing sunglasses with tears going down her cheeks, ate a Big Mac and babbled. “I guess the calories don't count if your dog just died. Ha-ha-ha.”

 

It's weird when you lose a parent, you're asked to, or you're told you can grieve for a year. But if you lose a pet, you're lucky if you get the day off work. And it was particularly hard, especially for my young daughter, Heidi. She was doing badly in school for the first time. She got really dark and her teacher found her a book to help her deal with the grief, coincidentally and unbelievably called Saying Goodbye to Lulu. [audience laughter] What are the odds? [audience laughter] I guess there's a lot of them out there. It was a story about a young girl who had a little puppy that died. And she ended up burying it in the backyard, wrapped in her sweater for some reason. And my wife and I, we read it. It was a cruel, dark read, but we got through it. [audience laughter] And it brought up the obvious for Heidi that she never got a chance to say goodbye to Lulu. My fault, of course. I kept her in the car.

 

And then the next few weeks, as Halloween grew near, nobody was talking about their costumes. Clearly, Halloween was off. And I came home though one day about a week before Halloween. And it's as if the mood in the house had shifted, as if someone had opened up a window and let in some happiness. And they announced that suddenly Halloween was back on. And they all knew what they were going to wear. My wife was going to go out as Frida Kahlo. My son was going to go out as either a ninja or an owl. He hadn't decided yet. My daughter was going to go out as a zombie that ate Disney princesses, [audience laughter] which I thought was another strong move. And they all knew what I should go out as. “You're going to go out as Lulu,” as my dead dog. [audience laughter] “And why?” “So people get a chance to say goodbye to Lulu.” And I thought, “No, I'm not doing it. [audience laughter] Make my wife do it. She's the actress.” As a parent, you get used to being used as a prop. My Dora's t-shirt became a Dora t-shirt a long time ago, but dad as dead dog? And I said, “Okay, I'll do it,” because when you're a parent, you know you just have to do it and hope for the best. 

 

Oh, and the other development is we were suddenly having a Halloween party so everyone we knew could come and say goodbye to Lulu. [audience laughter] The day of the party, I got ready for the worst gig of my adult life. [audience laughter] I put on my costume, and it was exactly what you'd think it was. An off-white tracksuit with some cotton on it, a white toque, as we call them in Canada, with some felt ears attached. My daughter did my makeup, and the last grim detail was I wore the actual collar that Lulu wore in life [audience laughter] with her little dog tags that you could jingle. I looked at myself in the mirror and I thought, “Well, at least I don't have any lines.”

 

As the party started, the doorbell rang and the first two people arrived. My daughter, Heidi, wobbled into the kitchen, moved around and puked. She puked a projectile vomit all over the island and on the floor. What goes around comes around isn't just about karma, folks. [audience laughter] It's also about the stomach flu. Some kids in class had it the previous week and I thought we dodged a bullet, but apparently not, because there was a pile of puke on the floor. I jumped into action and I told my wife to clean it up [audience laughter] in a respectful, uplifting way though. And I took Heidi into the TV room, where we conveniently still had the dog gate, like little bars so people could visit us in happy jail and we wouldn't get them sick. And we could observe the party. And we sat in there and we drank ginger ale and cuddled and I thought this is all I ever really wanted a family for, was to cuddle and watch Little Bear. 

 

My daughter was so happy. She started talking and telling me about her life, and she started telling me what she wanted to be when she grew up. And I wanted to butt in, but I couldn't because I was in character. [audience laughter] And while the party raged outside, Frida was moving around easily and my son was entertaining people with his ninja moves, even though he was dressed as an owl. [audience laughter] We sat and sighed and cuddled. Then everybody came and said goodbye to me. Well, Lulu and me. And then, they left. And then, it was just down to the four of us, my son, my wife, my daughter and I. And she looked at me and she said, “Well, we're all here now.” She looked at me and rubbed my ears, jiggled my collar, and said, “Goodbye, Lulu.” My heart both broke and leapt at the same time because she'd finally gotten to say it.

 

That night or middle of the night, I ran to the mirror and I caught a glimpse of myself, some dog makeup still on, and I know I'd gone dressed as my dead dog. But I came back as a guy who had done his best. And this, time it worked out.