These days time moves so quickly, I cannot stop it or even slow it down, some days it just rushes past at break neck speed. It is nearly a month since my heart was broken and my blood started boiling. I am so very very angry. At everything and at everyone. I cannot contain it very well.
I have started posts and not finished them, I have four or five client sessions still in editing mode and I have a To Do list the size of … well Nixie’s drool on Lamb Roast Night. I couldn’t look at photographs of other pets without crying, big ugly sobs, that hurt my chest.
And I still miss my Little Dude.
And I am still angry.
But I have to get back into it. These sessions won’t edit themselves, these emails won’t reply to themselves and these appointments won’t schedule themselves. I have been allowed as much time as I needed to grieve and to all my clients and friends and families, I thank you all very very much. This weekend I have my first session since, two adorable huskys with soft fur and beautiful natures – I shall bury my face in their fur and work for smiles and excitable puppy kisses.
For I really must try and release the anger, to find a way to smile through – or to find something to hit, to burn, perhaps to explode? [kidding]
I wish I fought harder, louder, stronger. I wish I knew why.
Things Do To After Your Dog Dies
Sweep the floor
Look out the window
Pant
Make a cup of tea and some toast
But then not eat them
Change the sheets on the bed
Try to sing
Start to cry
Forget what day it is
Stumble into a corner of the floor and hold your knees tightly
Keen
Pull yourself together
Make another cup of tea and this time drink it
Look out a different window
Stare at that spot on the floor where your dog used to stretch out, languid and happy, his paws twitching as he raced across sleep meadows and into dream ravines filled with moss and ferns and the scent of foxes
Look for the tissues
Use toilet paper instead
Wander around the house, your heart like a damned anvil in your chest
Heat up leftovers
Push them around the plate before leaving the entire thing in the sink
Look for what is not there
Hear things
Feel the forgotten fur beneath your fingertips
Feel the forgetting begin
Hold a memory, any memory, bright and shining, soft and sad, smelling of wet fur and leaves, with a whisker there and muddy paw prints left on the stairs, of a walk of a hike of a trip to the park with a treat and a bone and a belly rub snacks stolen off the counter and tug of war and the squeaky toy a glance of complicity in play with your hand on head with tail wagging and breath misting in the morning light or the moon over the trees while an owl croons ears are pricked and nose to the ground sniffing, sniffing, sniffing following the invisible trail to its joyful finding
Put on your pajamas
Turn around three times before you curl up by the rope toy and find yourself chasing the echo of a bark into a night that will never end
Grow a tail.
by Catherine Young
