Closure is a very overused concept and I don’t think it’s something particularly to aspire to. It’s a bit too final, almost tantamount to denial; I don’t want to ever close myself off to any emotion – even pain. Sometimes though, the universe throws us a curveball and we’re able to process and even exalt what we’ve lost.
Last year, two very sad things happened to me: My beloved dog, Honey, with whom I had my longest and most successful adult relationship, died, and then Scotland voted No in the independence referendum.
Honey was a collie-shepherd mix, a mutt I rescued and who came to me from the pound with a swath of yellow paint along her side, which someone had obviously thrown at her. She was crazy as a puppy, prone to hysterical episodes on the sidewalk which, according to the trainer I hired, could only properly be dealt with by me immediately getting on all fours and pinning her down till the fit had passed. Of course, such behaviour is not only embarrassing but memorable, and many years later I was horrified to be introduced to a society maven at some posh gala who said very loudly to the assembled grandees, “This is the actor I once saw lying on top of a dog in Chelsea!”
Honey eventually blossomed into one of the most calm, funny, loving creatures. But then she got cancer. The vet said we would know when it was time to let her go, and we did. The night we put her to sleep I wept more than I had in years. I think about her every single day.
And I’m still grieving about the Scottish referendum vote. (Though, from the ashes of that defeat there is a phoenix rising of political engagement, a sense of outrage at the false promises now reneged upon and a huge swing to the Scottish National Party that I believe makes independence inevitable.)
I took the defeat very personally. For as long as I can remember, Scotland has been doffing its cap to the posh boys from the South, and they have treated us again and again with utter disdain and like a rowdy trailer-trash branch of the extended family. They gladly took our oil money but told us it was a fair deal since Scotland was a nation of “subsidy junkies.” Then, when the opposite was proved to be true and everyone realized Scotland gets back from the U.K. less than it gives in taxes, we were told the oil was about to run out and we had no safety net to go it alone anyway.
I went to Scotland to campaign with the now-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in the final days of the campaign, when polls were showing the Yes campaign had taken the lead. Interviewed on the TV news that night, I used the phrase “ferrets in a sack” to describe the Better Together campaign, but looking back it was a more accurate description of how we Scots scrambled and panicked as the lairds from down south cast their net upon us.
And so in the early hours of Sept. 19, 2014, I found myself weeping again, this time for the missed opportunity of a nation. I wondered, had I done enough? Had I been a good enough dad to Honey? Had I stated my case for an independent Scotland loudly enough?
A few weeks later, something magical happened. Something I had no idea would turn out to be the healing tribute for the losses I felt so keenly.
I’d agreed to be painted by the winner of the SKY TV Portrait Artist of the Year. The artist, a cheery chap from Gibraltar named Christian Hook, came to New York for three prearranged sittings with me. Christian and I hit it off immediately and instead of sitting sedately, he had me dancing to Maria Callas, he flinging his paint as I flung my body around. We talked and talked and in the space of a few days I felt he really got to know me. He even let me paint one of the test canvases!
“What shall I do?” I asked
“Just do whatever you normally doodle,” he replied. With him, it seemed anything was possible. So I did my usual thing, a doodle of Honey, and I wrote the word “Yes” in big letters.
A couple of months later, in December, 2014, I was in the grand hall of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery amid the statues of Scottish legends such as Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott, my little mum beaming proudly, waiting for a large, black sheet to be pulled off the finished portrait to discover how I was to be represented in these hallowed halls forever. Christian was standing nervously by my side.
I loved the picture on sight. Not only was it a magical distillation of the time I had spent with Christian, but on closer inspection, it revealed that the two saddest parts of my year would now be represented boldly, proudly, beautifully and forever in my nation’s home for portraiture art.
You see, the kilt I am wearing around my neck is in the official tartan of the Yes campaign for independence, a contentious detail I was proud to reveal to the throng of Scottish glitterati that night. And even better, next to me is a jar, with a yellow swath across it, with the word Honey emblazoned on its front.
She will always be remembered, and the yearning for an independent Scotland is undiminished.
Alan Cumming is an actor and a writer. He is the author of the novel Tommy’s Tale and the autobiography Not My Father’s Son.