The Love They Leave Behind

Well, this post was tough to write.

Those of you who know me know that I just lost one of the most important beings in my life. My best friend, my little shadow, the love of my life, my soul puppy. My little Hank.

I adopted him when he was 9. We spent 8 years together. It doesn’t feel like nearly enough.

Cancer crept in toward the end and brought him to a point where I had to make a choice. Quite honestly, the hardest choice I think I’ve ever had to make. A choice where you can’t help but feel guilty, even when you know you’re making it from a place so filled with love that you can’t stand to watch them fade away any longer.

I think he understood. I hope he understood.

The thing about loss is that it hits differently for everyone. I don’t expect everyone to understand what I’m going through. Some people won’t understand at all, and that’s okay. It’s not their loss, it’s mine. Which means this isn’t for anyone to navigate but me.

So, in the moments where I question whether the intense, devastating waves of sadness are healthy, I have to remind myself that yes- they are. That’s just the leftover love trying to figure out where to go.

I don’t know what I believe happens when we die. I do believe we are all energy, and I have to believe that energy goes somewhere. I want to believe he’s still around in some form.

Do we come back as something else? Someone else? Was he reborn somewhere as a puppy again, sent to bring someone else the joy he brought me? Is he part of some soul cluster, destined to find his way back into my life as another dog, another person, another being entirely? Or is he just waiting somewhere for me, patiently?

I remember thinking the other night that if I’m the one wandering around looking for him while he’s somewhere peaceful, rested, and no longer scared, then I can live with that. I really can.

I carry his ashes with me to coffee in the morning. They sit beside me at my desk while I work. He’s with me during TV time at night. I guess it’s safe to say I haven’t let him go. I don’t think I ever will.

Jay planted a tulip under Hank’s favorite place to roam- an old apple tree with a giant hole through the trunk that somehow still blooms and produces fruit every year anyway. I look at it from my office window all the time. The tulip droops a little, slightly off-center and lazy, kind of like my boy was. But somehow still beautiful.

My heart breaks often. The grief is real.

You can think “it’s just a dog,” but to me, he was my world. My routine. The closest thing I had to a child. Completely silent at the end, relying on me for everything. I was his person. He was my one constant. He lit something up inside of me, and you don’t realize how much that spark keeps you going until it’s suddenly gone.

I wish I had some profound advice about grief or healing, but I don’t. That’s what Google is for.

I think you just have to do whatever brings you comfort. Give yourself grace. Give yourself room to grieve. It looks different for everyone. The time it takes is the time it takes. Maybe it lasts forever in some ways. Maybe it softens.

Life is beautiful, and fragile, and painfully short. Especially for them.

For something so full of pure love, that’s a hard thing to accept. But I think maybe that’s why they’re here. To teach us what love feels like. To remind us what it means to be chosen, completely and without condition, even if only for a little while.

And I think that’s pretty special.