The A La Carte

Last Sunday, I lost my dog.

Even typing that sentence feels strange.

Partly because I still don’t want it to be true.

Partly because life has a funny way of demanding your attention even when your heart is somewhere else.

I’ve gone back and forth on whether I wanted to write about this.

Not because he wasn’t important enough to write about.

Quite the opposite.

Some losses feel too big for words.

My dog passed away in a tragic accident after being spooked by a beeping smoke detector. One moment everything was normal. The next, our world changed.

We are all absolutely devastated.

The details don’t really matter as much as the reality that he’s gone.

And if you’ve ever lost a pet, you know exactly what I mean when I say that “pet” feels like an inadequate word.

He wasn’t a pet.

He was family.

He was routine.

He was comfort.

He was personality.

He was twelve and a half years of memories woven into ordinary life.

And now every ordinary thing feels a little different.

The thing nobody really talks about is that the world doesn’t stop for grief.

Emails still arrive.

Meetings still happen.

Work still needs to get done.

Dogs still need to be walked.

Laundry still piles up.

You still find yourself standing in the grocery store trying to remember what you came for while simultaneously wondering how someone can be gone so quickly.

That’s the strange part.

Not that life stops.

That it doesn’t.

I’ve found myself looking for silver linings because that’s what people do when they’re trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense.

I never had to watch him get old and sick.

I never had to make the impossible decision about whether it was time.

He lived a spoiled, happy, loved life for all twelve and a half years.

Those things are true.

But another truth exists alongside them.

I would have taken every hard day that comes with old age if it meant having more time.

I would have taken the medications.

The vet visits.

The difficult decisions.

All of it.

Because love makes that trade every single time.

The thing I keep coming back to is that he didn’t spend twelve and a half years wondering if he was loved.

He knew.

Every day.

He was spoiled.

He was ridiculous.

He had opinions.

He had routines.

He had a personality bigger than his body.

And he was deeply loved.

Maybe that’s the best any of us can hope for.

Not a life without tragedy.

Not a life without loss.

A life where, when our story is told, the overwhelming theme is love.

Right now, the grief is still fresh.

Some moments are okay.

Some aren’t.

Some days I can focus on work.

Some days I find myself looking at pictures for far longer than I intended.

I’m learning that grief isn’t something you get over.

It’s something you carry.

And eventually, hopefully, you learn how to carry it without it crushing you.

For now, I’m just taking it one day at a time.

Missing my boy.

Being grateful for the years we had.

And trying to remember that love is what makes grief hurt this much in the first place.

If you’ve ever loved a dog, you understand.

And if you’ve ever lost one, I’m sorry.

I really, truly am.

Fly high little man, I know you’re up there playing with Duder and Millie and all the other friends you made along the way.