When the soul leaves your body but you’re still walking around breathing… At least once in your lifetime you’ll probably find yourself here. Here, just existing with no desire to be anywhere, least of all here, putting on the smiling facade designed to not bring others down into the quicksand with you, all the while sinking and not willing to struggle against it. Just waiting to disappear, wishing to…
Most of us have been there, we’ve lost someone or something we loved that brought us joy but it hits different when it’s a beloved pet, an animal that became your heart, your soul, your world and you know that according to society that you’re supposed to feel this way about losing a human being, but for some reason people look at you sideways when they find that this grief and your sense of well being was lost when a pet passed.
I have something to say to those people; in relationships with other humans we always face the possibility of their expectations and perceptions of us changing, the possibility that they’ll move on and leave us behind, that they’ll find fault with us and use that as their excuse to exit, we always feel we have to guard the heart with humans.
With a pet there’s never judgement, they love and accept you no matter your mood, appearance, hygiene, they just love you and they’re always happy to see you, it doesn’t matter if they just saw you five minutes ago, the love is absolutely unconditional. Humans will tell you that they’ll love you that way, but it’s rare, very rare, when they do, with pets it’s the standard.
Perhaps some would say that from the animal’s perspective this is a survival mechanism, you after all are where the food comes from, but when you have a soul bond with an animal it’s completely different and the loss of that hits you differently. I’ve had that bond, she knew when I needed her, when I needed more attention, she also knew when I was faking it for attention! Somehow though, she knew, and there were extra cuddles when I needed them, she would sense something was wrong and wouldn’t let me be alone, she was on my heels and in my business if I seemed off to her, no human has ever been that intuitive to my changes in energy, no human has ever been that attentive to me and I’m not the easiest person to read either, I get quiet, I get busy, I find ways to distract myself from trauma, I put on the happy face and force it, she wasn’t having any of it.
Honestly she got anxious if she couldn’t be with at least one of us and she wasn’t happy when it wasn’t both of us, so we began taking her everywhere with us. By the same token, I couldn’t sleep at night if I couldn’t hear her breathing and because she was my regulation, I slept well most nights through the night, until she became ill. As long as I could reach down and touch her, or hear her snoring softly, all was good and right in my world.
John talked me into a dog, I hadn’t wanted one, I think he knew I needed something in my life that was joyful, I was going through a lot of family trauma, work trauma, the trauma of a move several states away from my parents who were in a nursing facility… he knew and she came into my life bringing joy, warmth, comfort, and unconditional love. On a bad day, she’d be there, with all her sass to play tug, or pull me around in my office chair while I was working. She was this way with both of us, part of the team, hanging out with Dad in his office, running in there when he played guitar to lay at his feet and listen intently, laying outside the door if he was on calls, coming to get me if she became concerned with something she heard in his voice. She was a constant in our lives when everything else was scattered across many states, with drama and turmoil to boot, she was the one place we could both go to find comfort and warmth, the one constant comfort in a world of hurt.
She’s always been that for me. I called myself her mom, but she was more of a mom to me, extremely protective, even scolding me with her side eye, mouthing off to me when I pretended to cry for attention, she always knew when I really needed her, she was attached to me during those times as if we were two sides of a velcro closure. During thunderstorms even though she was terrified of them, all 140lbs of she would suddenly jump in my lap, at first standing on me, growling and barking while shaking in fear, it would always end with us cuddling, her full body weight against me, head on my chest, me wrapping my arm around her head stroking her jaw and ear, right hand rubbing her belly and we’d stay like that sometimes through the whole storm, I can still feel the velvety softness of her ears when I think of that. When fireworks were going off in the neighborhood, you’d find her right in front of me, or under the foot of the recliner, I’d throw a blanket over us and make her a fort, she wouldn’t leave my side. I remember the first time I showed her the fireworks so she’d understand where the noise was coming from, I had her come to the front door with me and opened it to look out, she peered pensively around my leg and then pushed me back away from them, putting herself in between me and the very dangerous noise and light, of course she was shaking like a leaf while growling and threatening them, but I let her play fierce and then we went back to the couch for a cuddle.
There are so many little moments, the head over the shoulder in the car, the chin on the foot rest of the recliner, big brow eyes imploring you to give a nibble or a pet, cooking with mom in the kitchen hoping I’d drop a morsel for her, following me to the bathroom just because, and opening the door if I dared to close it! I loved seeing and her bird brother Crackers having morning meditations. They would stare out the window together every morning for an hour, silent, comfortable, safe and happy.
All that is gone now, all of life is gray and colorless, perfunctory. I make lunch for us when I used to make lunch for all three of us and make a big deal of presenting her with her own plate, now there are snacks for 2 instead of 3, rides in the car no longer punctuated by the joy of her “Roo, Roo,Roos” from the back seat as she demanded her windows be rolled down, no more walks into work in the morning suddenly halted by her Rotty ADHD with the latest sighting of a squirrel or a rabbit, her butt wiggling too and fro when she’d spy something new…. It’s all just silence now, gray, colorless, joyless, it’s just something we do now, no celebration, no excitement. Bedtime used to be met with fanfare, she’d bark excitedly at her bird brother and we’d loudly proclaim, “Let’s go out and potty so we can all pile in the den to sleep,” the head and butt scratches a necessity before we could settle in, and watch a little of one of her favorite shows and drift off listening to her breathing. Now we can no longer hear her snoring beside us, all is quiet, still, void. She no longer sunbathes on the patio, we used to love watching her there, and she no longer sticks her nose through the fence gate to ‘boof’ at her neighbors, the nose prints are still there and will remain there, just like the back windows in the car covered with her slobbery excitement, all that will remain until it wears away, because I can’t, I just can’t bring myself to clean it off. I have a blanket we always cuddled in on the couch, it is folded so that her smell stays, I’d probably beat someone to death with a kitchen implement if they touched it, this and the memories are what we have left, this and her ashes, which now take up the spot by the bed that she loved.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be whole again, I don’t think I’ll ever get over the way we lost her, it has tested everything in me watching such a sweet, loving, beautiful creature die in that much pain and the horrific way the cancer presented outside the body the last few days of her life was horrific and monstrous, and at the time I thought, this is nature in all its tooth and claw, and it's unnecessarily cruel and I cursed the universe that she died.
Then I spoke my loss of faith out loud and John gently reminded me, this is humans doing this to all of us. The ancestors have gifted us with all this knowledge, all that we need to be cured has been provided. People who have discovered cures have been silenced and disappeared. All this suffering has come about because humans have no respect for nature, for each other, only the holy dollar has meaning to them. If not for their torturing humans and animals for profit while pillaging the earth in search of more profit, none of us, including our fur babies, would still be dying from this damn disease. So I've apologized for my curses thrown at the universe in my rage and I lay it firmly at the feet of those who profit from healthcare and the destruction and pillaging of the mother. I hope you all lie stinking and rotting in the earth so that you might finally serve some higher purpose. I blame you for all the suffering in this world and you shall not escape your fate, no one does.
All thanks go to my husband and best friend John for being my rock and my sanity through this, for loving both of us enough to hold us through the pain until our sweet girl passed peacefully. Thank you for reminding me that the power and the fault lies within the human heart, and thank you for grieving with me, for just being there for me, we hold each other, as we hold up the sky my love.
The outpouring of support from this community cannot go unspoken, gifts of love, food, flowers, candle holders to surround her pictures, beautiful candles with portraits of Bella on them, a framed set of pictures of her gifted by two of our beautiful friends that I now kiss and touch several times a day, hang in our hallway where the Rottweiler calendar once hung, a new garden planting on the patio where she liked to sun herself now holds a solar lantern with rotties printed on the insert gifted by one of our friends and the sunflowers gifted by another, each and everyone of you has been a salve on two broken hearts, broken heart syndrome is very real and this outpouring of love from you has gotten us through some very dark times. We love you all so much. We cannot thank you enough. We love you all very much and she loved all of you too!
All my love,
Tay