grief, loss, and the struggle to stay afloat

it takes a second to say goodbye, a lifetime to get over it

ren and lili as drawn by a friend

It’s the emptiness that gets to me sometimes, the feeling that my house is lacking something, that it is a shell I inhabit, one in which my footsteps echo against the silence. It used to be a lively house. It used to be a home.

The four of us - me and him and two dogs - made for a noisy home but for the most part it was a joyful noise, all barking and laughing and going about our days feeling like I had settled on something wonderful, something that had been elusive in my life for years. I had a sense of home, of belonging, of being a part of something. This was nice. It was comforting. It felt right.

We went on like this for years, living the day to day lives of a suburban couple just trying to get by. Our days were filled with work, and then after work there was us. We ate dinner, we walked the dogs, we snuggled up on the couch, the four of us, watching movies. Even when there were moments of struggle, of sadness and stress, we had each other. He brought me comfort. Our dogs, Lili and Ren, brought me peace. Life was not perfect, but at times I could almost believe it was.

We had already started unraveling a bit when Lili got sick in May of 2019. Things were weird; I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something in our house was changing. The comfort and peace I had always felt seemed to be out of my grasp. There was more silence than animated conversation. I was alone often while he went to various AA meetings, or the shooting range, or weekend excursions with his buddies. I still found comfort in the dogs, but something had fundamentally changed and there was a great vibe shift on our home. When Lili passed away, the emptiness and silence were even more profound. Her death turned a subtle shift into a very noticeable one.

I still had Ren to come home to, which made dealing with Lili’s death a little easier. We cuddled, we walked, we played. She slept next to me at night and shared a couch with me during the day. It was weird not having two dogs to walk, and I kind of missed getting tangled up in their leashes. I missed how they would play with each other, or cuddle up in one dog bed together. My heart was broken over Lili and I dealt with my heartbreak more or less alone.

When the pandemic hit in early 2020, I was already in a precarious mental state. Being home from work and terrified of catching of the virus, spending all day staring at CNN watching the death toll rise, it was all so traumatic. I was still experiencing bouts of grief about Lili, and now here I was, like most people at the time, grieving so much COVID loss. It was frightening and sad and I sunk into a depression, which was not a unique position to be in at that time.

There are so many types of grief, so many ways to grieve. We grieve the deaths of people we know and love, we grieve the death of our pets, we grieve the deaths of strangers. We grieve the losses in our life, big and small. We grieve for parts of our life that are now lost to us. It’s more than just being sad; grief is like your heart gasping for air. It’s an all consuming thing that forces you to wonder what meaning life has and what purpose death has. You can suffer loss in so many ways, and there’s not telling which way your grief is going to carry you, you just ride it out and let it carry you where it may. It can last years or months, it can make you angry as well as it can make you numb. If there’s one thing I learned from the past three years, it’s that grief does not walk a straight line. It takes you place. Wild, wild places where there are tears and aching, where there is silence, where there is screaming, where you feel like no one can understand or empathize with you.

Just when I thought we were rounding a corner, where memories of Lili produced smiles instead of tears, where I thought I could see some light around the bend, my marriage abruptly ended. Maybe there were signs all along that it was headed this way, but I always believed in us. I believed we had what it took to overcome and persevere. I believed were a team. I believed wrong. After setting up a new life for himself behind my back, he walked out on January 30, 2021, leaving me and Ren with a house that had voided itself of joy.

I grieved for two years. The loss I felt was immense, the anger and sadness overwhelming. People kept telling me to feel my feelings, to cry every day if I had to, to let the sorrow out. I did all that not because they told me to, but because it is in my very nature to feel openly, to shed my emotions, to expose my heart. I was, in essence a wreck. But I had my home and I had Ren in it and her constant companionship and her silly demeanor helped me through the days. Pets know what’s up. They know when you are feeling bad. Ren made herself comfortable on the couch as close to me as she could get. I feel like she was comforting me as I went through the stages of grief in a completely haphazard way. It was so good to have her around, to have the noise of her barking at neighborhood dogs, chasing her ball, noisily crunching a Milk-Bone. Her noises, her presence filled the house with something other than grief.

On the two year anniversary of him leaving, I decided I was no longer going to grieve him or my marriage. I was ready to move forward. I was ready to embrace what life had in store for me. I was shedding my mourning skin and taking on a whole new persona, one of a person who had hope and optimism, one who finally learned how to be ok with being alone.

Ren got sick in March. It was sudden, unexpected. One day she was fine, the next day she wasn’t eating and was lethargic. A trip to our vet led to a trip to the emergency vet. I left her there on a Tuesday. She had surgery. She seemed to be doing ok. On Wednesday she went into cardiac arrest. She died five minutes after they called to tell me she took a turn for the worse. I wasn’t with her. I went the next morning and held her body and kissed her forehead and said goodbye.

When Lili died, I had Ren for comfort. I had my husband for the same. When I came home from the vet after leaving Ren’s body there to be cremated, it was to an empty, still house. There was just me. There was no other dog. There was no husband. There were just empty spaces that used to be filled. There were just dog beds and toys and they felt like an intrusion. I cried for days. The solitude that I had so recently learned to appreciate was too much. I needed noise, I needed the sound of a dog barking. I needed to not be in this lonely, dark place where there was absolutely nothing left to comfort me. I mourned and felt this loss in a far deeper way than I felt the loss of my marriage.

It wasn’t just Ren I was mourning then. It was everything from 2019 on. Where was the life I had so recently where I thought I was blessed to be even living it? That life where I was happy and content and free from pervasive sadness, where did that go and how could I get it back? The thing is, I can’t. I can’t bring back my dogs any more than I can bring back my marriage. I can’t bring back serenity. I can’t bring back contentment and that specific joy I derived from being part of something, part of my own little family. I grieve all that I lost.

It’s Easter week and I have always viewed this time of year as one of renewal. I could make that case to myself, that I need to grow and move forward and be born again as someone who has put their grief and mourning behind them. But do we ever do that? Are those things ever really behind us or is grief a never ending emotion that sneaks up on you just when you think you are making progress?

I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know how to process everything that has happened to me in the past three years, including some major health issues. But let me ask you this: do I have to? Do I have to process it or do I just let it be, let grief and sadness intertwine with all my other emotions and just know that they are there forever, but maybe not always so profound.

I will reckon with the emptiness eventually. Maybe with the nice weather I will start of feel more hopeful, more optimistic. Maybe my grief will get carried away on the April winds. Or maybe I will just learn to live with it.

[please do not suggest i go out and get another dog right away, i am not entertaining thoughts about this until after summer. i need time]