Ready to talk about it

I owe it to you, and I owe it to him, to write this. It's been three weeks, somehow-- three weeks of near-constant sad reminders, the empty chair, the lack of yarled or yipped greeting when we arrive home from wherever we've been. Losing a pet isn't like losing a dear though distant relative. Like a grandma. Sure, you'll miss her at Christmas dinner, and Thanksgiving, your heart will be sore for a time. But this emptiness, all the time, the whole house feels quiet and lonely. That is losing a pet.

 It was very fast. I guess that's a blessing. Five days before Christmas, he didn't seem like himself. He was having trouble walking again-- a trouble that came and went usually depending on how recently we'd given him a cortisone pill. This time the pills didn't help, though. He wasn't pricking up his ears anymore, really-- they were back, or out to the side: the worried, confused look. Then he stopped eating. 

The day before my birthday, we took him in.

Man. That was hard.

I'm not sure if it's a good thing that it was during Christmas. In a way, it was good-- the house was full, we were surrounded by friends. We didn't have to sit in the dark and feel the loneliness.

 And now, Christmas is gone, winter goes on. Life goes on. It is so quiet.

 This little dog saw us through so much. Saw Patrick through so much-- twelve years, three girlfriends, three houses, one wife, three cats, many mountains and lakes and trails. We can torture ourselves by remembering and reliving the end-- because that is really the only thing a human mind can do, when you put down a pet-- or we can tell those great stories together, The Good Old Days. Playing monkey in the middle with a stuffed trout, the day we came home and found he'd climbed onto the kitchen table and made a nest in a fresh-from-the-drier comforter. Overlook Mountain, from that first picture, and those first trips out to Gilbertsville. He was freaking blind, he had no idea, but somehow he knew it was the beginning of something awesome. That first time he felt his way up the front steps, he knew. And this past summer, those warm days I could leave him outside while I weeded or worked on the greenhouse, those evenings the three of us (and sometimes Pete too) hung out in the cool grass by the chicken yard.

Damnit, I even miss him eating the cat litter.

Ugh. This sadness! Really, I'm okay. I don't spend all day moping around, but every day I think of him. As it should be, I guess. Patrick and I talk about The Good Old Days, we raise our glasses. We talk about getting another dog, soon but not too soon. When the snow melts. When spring comes. And I think about what I'm going to plant under the birch tree, to mark the place. Something variegated and effusive, I think, would suit.

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