Hokie made the decision for her, though, as that evening he passed away in his sleep. One minute he was lying sleeping on the sofa, cuddling up to Katy as he usually did. A moment or two later, with a quick last whimper, he was gone.
The days that followed were a blur for Katy. She could not eat, nor could she sleep without the comforting weight of Hokie at her feet. She missed him so much. Her husband tried to comfort her by telling her that he would get her another dog, but she refused, telling him that nobody could replace Hokie. He had been her companion through all the trials and tribulations of the past 14 years. He had been her friend when nobody else wanted to be, he had been her companion when she had been lonely, he had smiled in his own special way with his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth when he had known she was happy. He had even attended her wedding, wearing a smart black bow tie. She just could not countenance another dog taking his place.
Some weeks passed and Katy was at last beginning to come to terms with the loss of Hokie. She still looked for him as she opened the door when she arrived home from work every day, though, only for realization to dawn that he was not there. She still missed him terribly, but she had reached a point where she did not break down in tears each time she thought of him. It was at this point that she contacted me.
I was due to visit Loughborough and somehow Katy had heard that I was coming to a bookshop to do a signing session for one of my book releases. On the designated day, she turned up at the bookshop and waited until the end of the signing. It was at this point that she approached me and told me the story of Hokie.
‘Will I ever see him again?’ she pleaded with me.
I was happy to tell Katy that she would indeed meet up with Hokie once more. When her time came to pass over in to the spirit world, Hokie would run to meet her as joyfully as he had when he was here on Earth with her in his physical life. He would never forget her and the wonderful life she had given him after the awful treatment he had received from his first owner. He was her lifelong pal and this closeness would continue from beyond the veil.
Katy seemed happy to know that she would see Hokie again and that he would still be around her now, although she could not see him and had not felt his presence.
A week or two later I received an excited telephone call from Katy. ‘Hokie’s come back!’ she told me.
She explained that she had come home from work as usual one evening and as she had opened the door she had heard a quiet ‘woof’ coming from the area of the kitchen. She had been surprised, as this was what Hokie had always done to greet her when she came home and she knew of course that Hokie was no longer there.
Now each evening the same thing was happening. As she opened the front door, she would hear Hokie’s ‘woof’ in greeting. She also told me that she had definitely felt him around her in the house. She had been able to feel his presence almost as strongly as if she could see him.
The previous night had confirmed everything to her. She had been lying in bed when she had heard a patter of small paws, then felt a ‘thud’ as something Hokie-sized had landed on the bottom of the bed.
‘I know he’s back with me, Derek!’ she said excitedly. ‘I just know it!’
Almost six months later I was in Birmingham appearing at the Alexandra Theatre. At the end of the evening I was surprised to see Katy.
‘I had to come and see you,’ she told me, ‘and I have to tell you that I’ve got a new dog. I’ve called her Sally and she’s adorable. She’ll never take Hokie’s place, but I missed having a dog around the house.’
I was pleased to hear that Katy had taken the step of acquiring a new pet. It is something that I can heartily recommend from personal experience. We may love our pets to distraction, but when they go they leave a huge hole in our lives and that hole can be filled by having another pet to love. It does truly ease the pain a little and in time you get to love the new pet just as much as the pet that you lost, although in a different way.
My heart goes out to anybody who is suffering the loss of a pet at the moment. I can only say that our animals do pass over to the world of spirit, they do live on and they do come back to visit us. For anybody who would like to visit a website, I would recommend logging on to www.petloss.com. I am sure that the comfort you will receive will help you come to terms with your loss and confirm to you that your beloved pets do indeed live on.
Whilst driving from my home in Southport towards Liverpool one day I happened to take a route through Crosby, which is one of the suburbs of the city and famed for the statues of 100 men on its beach. After passing through the town I headed towards the Dock Road, the road that passes in front of the old Liverpool Dock warehouses and runs for miles through to Liverpool 8.
As I approached the beginning of the Dock Road I recalled the days of my boyhood in an area not too far away from there. I slowed down somewhat. Brasenose Road was where I had lived in the days when my mother, my older sister and brother and I had lived with my grandmother. It was in my grandmother’s house that I had had my first spiritual experience when I had seen my maternal grandfather, a man who had passed to spirit before I was born. I decided that I would take a look to see what remained of the area where I spent my formative years.
As I passed the sign for Oil Salvage Limited, I turned off the Dock Road and into Marsh Lane, heading towards the Strand shopping centre. I turned right and travelled along Stanley Road, passed the High Baird College and down to Bank Hall Road, where I turned right. A short distance further along I came to the junction with Brasenose Road. My, how it had changed!
The majority of the houses with which I was familiar had disappeared now. In their place stood retail buildings. The first thing that I noticed was that the public house on the corner that I remembered as the Hanged Man – aptly named, as I recall, after the fact that a man was actually hanged on the premises – was now the Brasenose Road Café. It was open and as I had missed breakfast, I decided that I would go in and get a cup of tea and perhaps a sandwich.
The moment I walked in, I was enveloped by the smell of steaming cups of tea and coffee, toast and frying bacon. The staff in the café greeted me with ‘Hello, Derek. What on Earth are you doing here?’
I explained to them that I had been driving through to Liverpool and had felt the urge to visit the area of my old home.
‘Well, you sit down and I’ll make you a nice cuppa and a bacon butty,’ one of the women said. As I did not have much time to spare, I told her that I would take the drink and the food out to my car. ‘Well you’ll have to come back here and do a programme for the telly,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a ghost in here, you know!’
I was not at all surprised by her words. Although I was definitely not open to spirit activity at the time, I had already noticed that there was a huge amount of residual activity within the old building and certainly more than a suggestion that spirit people came and went between the physical world and their spiritual home.
As the woman cooked the bacon for my sandwich, she told me about the ‘resident ghost’.
‘We call him Jack,’ she said, ‘and he’s a mischievous bugger! He turns taps on and off and moves things around. He makes noises all the time and follows people around the place. It can be frightening at times. If I’m here on my own I tell him to sod off and leave me alone. He’s not here all the time, though.’
I explained that he was very likely only in visitation to the old public house because he had either worked or lived there