Your Pet Loss Diaries

Weds May 20, 2009

by JR
(Waldorf, MD)

It's been nearly seven months since you had to leave me. Seven months. It feels more like seven years, a small lifetime. And in it's gulf I've felt more pain than I ever knew even existed.

Of all the things I've written in my life, nothing has been so hard as this. Words just can't touch the emotion.

But I will try.

Since you left I've been searching for meaning in life; before you, I just went on with it day-to-day, taking every moment not so much for granted, but not appreciating the time of NOW. You taught me the danger in that. It's so easy to look ahead, to look behind, but life is lived in the present, and there is no way around that. Now is the time to be happy, to -

Happiness.

I wonder if that will ever be possible again.

And now my thoughts rewind back further, to the word "meaning." What possible meaning is there if we come into this world to breath a few breaths, make a few memories, experience love and loss, and then leave the world? Is the only lasting point in life our death? It seems - God, it seems that way, for every thing we do from our first breath to our last, every thing and one we know and come to love, it all goes away in the end. Everything. Bleakness does not even begin to define it.

On the other hand ...

Is there something more than this? Are you in a better place as I have seen you in my dreams? Will I be with you again one day?

In this world you always loved so much to be brushed, and although I did so lovingly, I did so briefly, always thinking that you would be there the next day for more. And then one night, a night where you may have been trying to tell me something before you went outside, and maybe even the days before it, there were no more days. No more chances to do what you so loved having done to you.

If there is another side, a meaning to all of this pain and loss and torment, I will see you again, and when I do, I will brush you until your whole-again heart is content. You will not need medicine. You will not need reassurances. You will need only love, and you will have it from me forever.

I miss you, but as long as I draw breath, you will be with me always.

And I pray, for that is all I can do, that there is something more than the misery and the loss.

When I think of you and how much you loved every day of your life, I think anything is possible. Even that.

Take care, my buddy, and from time-to-time, when you need a break from playing in those fields of high grass and chasing those mice that can never quite be caught, look down on me and remember the good times we had. I will always be looking up for you.

Until we are reunited, I will see you in the best of my dreams.