Giving Up On Loving. The Ultimate Cost To Grieving.

Grieving has consequences. Serious, mind numbing, life paralyzing consequences. I call it the collateral damage to loving so much it hurts too bad to consider ever doing it again. Grieving is the yin to the deep love of living that is its yang.

I get it. I really, really, do! I know what grieving is. How hard it is to get through once you get pulled into it. I know what loving costs.

Me and my beloved Jekyll, at the oncologists office.

As a veterinarian I see pet loss and grieving daily. It is the painful sunset consequence to every jubilant new puppy and kitten exam we get to share. Where there is a beginning for these new bundles there is also often a decade or more of rich, deep love that at some point meets it end. That goodbye can cost more than anyone signs up for when they go to bring home their new companion. Saying goodbye often causes a forever farewell for many pet parents. I fear too often that their grief often comes with an ultimatum for never grieving again.

Overwhelmingly I get three responses when my clients lay to rest their last pet...

1. "We want to travel."

2. "They are too expensive."

3. "I never want to feel this heartbreak again. It's too much."

Do you wonder how many people say this to me? A LOT. I have started to classify them, and by "them" I include all people who have to say adieu to their beloved pets, into two categories.

Number one. My category. The place where sharing our lives with pets is our purpose. The people who can't imagine, nor have ever dared, to not have a pet in our life. The people who can't live, won't live, wouldn't even try to imagine living without a pet in their life. I am this person. I grieve but I get back in the saddle. Again. And, Again. It never gets easier to grieve the next time. Even with all my practice.

Number Two; everyone else.

.

Whenever I fear one of these reasons I always find it is almost impossible for me to answer these without clarifying who I am and what my life looks like.

Lewes Beach, delaware. My last vacation with my dying pup.

I LOVE to travel. In fact as I pen this I am on a train to NYC and then onto Boston. It is a 5 day jaunt. My three pups are with my parents. I am incredibly lucky to have parents who tolerate two puppies who most of the time act like deranged lunatics on an endless sugar high. The puppies love being there, and my parents love the puppy antics they entertain them with. We are a pet centered family. We all share each others pets and they share each others homes. If you aren't as lucky as I am to have family or friends share custody there are other options like Rover.com, or a boarding facility like my clinic runs. If you are a person who thinks that long term boarding, frequent boarding or even day trips are needed start acclimating your pup as soon as you get them. Make boarding a "normal" activity. Ask if you can start with a day or two a week and work up to overnights. Also get to know the boarding staff. They (we sure do) will send you daily photos, updates and help make their vacation as much fun as yours. If these don't work share your home with a pet sitter, or your pet can stay at doggie camp while you are away. If finances are tight a staycation, or working vacation are options. In some cases you can even bring your pet with you, although this might be too stressful for some pets. I have clients who chose to travel by motor home so their pets can be with them at all times.

The expense, well, all living creatures need appropriate health care, food, shelter, and these take financial resources. If you think that the emotional trade off has a financial restriction I can't argue with you, you just don't get it. There is no price for the love, devotion, and companionship they give for free. If you live within a tight budget, or need to budget for emergencies consider pet insurance, have an emergency pet fund, and find a vet like us who will help you with payment options if they are needed. Money doesn't have to be a defining limitation to loving a pet, but with all responsibilities that are willingly, consciously entered upon please don't adopt a companion if you cannot adequately compensate for them. I am not the veterinarian to preach about "don't have one if you cannot afford them," I am the veterinarian who will tell you from experience that the wealthiest clients don't necessarily make the most devoted parents. I will also adamantly state that caring for a pet with limited funds is possible. It takes a team approach. It takes honesty on the part of the parents. It takes openness, truthful discussions, devoted emotional investment that you share with the veterinarian, don't be angry at the vet, don't try to coerce, lie, threaten, manipulate, it will cost your pet and break the walls of trust that allow compromise to happen. I have managed difficult cases on a shoe string. It also takes a veterinarian willing to work with a budget and compromise. Not every vet does, and it is important to establish this very early on in the relationship.

Neutering Storm..

I can say this. There is a yin to grieving. There is a sunrise on the other side. There is a peaceful awakening when you open your life again to loving someone. There is also immense joy in opening your heart back up to another soul living in the today and joyful in the delight of the moment. Mourning often robs you of this. A distraction, a life to share, and a new place to build a future on is often the only thing that heals me.

I am a slave to loving my cats and dogs. It is an addiction like no other. I miss them painfully when I am away on vacation. But I am bursting with glee when they reunite with me. I mourn them when they pass on with a grief many non-pet people don't relate to, and I go on with another hopeful friend awaiting me somewhere. They are my constant source of hope and love. I still vacation, grieve them when they are gone, and invest in the care I owe them as my family.

I often tell people that I feel as if my life has been lived in chapters. Some were defined by places I lived, the events that occurred around them, but, most were overwhelmingly defined by my companions, the dogs, cats, and pigs who shared each place in time with me. They are the foundation to my life's story. The place markers, the main characters, and often the support system to get through.

Storm and Fripp.

As I lost Jekyll I gained two desperate disposed of souls who needed me almost as much as I needed them. If you have it to give cast it like seeds, watch them grow around you. It is what life means as it matters.

This is the balance to loss, living and loving again, for as long as this life will allow me.

For more information on pet loss and grieving please see my other blogs on this subject here;

Terminal Mom; The Pet Mom I Became As I Was Losing My Jekyll.

This Time Around. Coming To Terms With The Death Of My Dog.

The Phantom Effect. Pet Loss and Grieving.

The Aftermath of Pet Loss.

For more on Jekyll, his journey, and the process of digging myself out of the loss of him please see the past blogs on him here;

A Tribute to my Beloved Jekyll-Pup. May You Run Through The Fields Forever.

Jekyll

For more information on anything and everything pet related please ask us for free at Pawbly.com.

For more information on Jarrettsville Veterinary Center please visit our Facebook page, or website; JarrettsvilleVet.com

I am also posting lots of informative videos at my YouTube channel here.

Thank you for reading and sharing your life with the companions who remind us why life is worth working so hard to keep them in the lifestyle they have grown accustomed to.

Terminal Mom. The Pet Mom I Became While Losing My Jekyll-Pup

Death. It is unavoidable.. Un-avoidable!. In my veterinary day to day practice I see death most often creeping in like an insidious pestilence. The end,, that precipice place right before life meets forever absent, well that place, where I am mired now, that place sucks,, bad.

Your life and the way you see it, the lens you see everything through, changes. It has too, you have to filter out the clutter, minimize the distractions, focus on the living left to do. Life here at the transition out of it is like a vacuum, a quiet, lonely, absent, dark void.

I was one of those overprotective, hovering, helicopter moms. I have a beagle after all. You let those beagles out of your sight and off they go, into the clear blue yonder, nose to the ground, running, ears flapping in the wind their heels kick up. Beagles live on short leashes, or in kennels, or anchored to a pack and a leader. They make bad decisions if left untethered. Truth is they don 't know any better. It's genetics screaming at their primitive primal brain imprisoned by a nose that must follow where the trail lies, the bunnies are, and the adventure is certainly awaiting. They can't help it. They are a body enslaved to a nose they cannot turn off, nor ignore. I am that mom to a kid possessed, called, beckoned, reckoned to be elsewhere (except when the dinner bell rings or it is raining...beagles are bog avoiding babies in the rain). I am also the mom who keeps tabs,, makes sure they know where their kids are at all times.. I should say, was, I was that mom.

Now I am a mom with a kid on a short timetable. Weeks, maybe months, but damned unlikely to be a enough months to amount to a year. Life changes when the calendar gets to pages, single digits, pieces of a lunar fluctuation, or,  "this might be the last time we get to..." thoughts. My wishes for him have changed, come full circle. I want him to run, play, be the boy his beagleness calls him to be. We go for long walks, unleashed, unmonitored. He gets lost in being the boy with the nose in the dirt. We live without consequences in the wild. To die on the trail, possessed and unfettered by a disease that is eating him up from the inside, and backside out. If he passes while doing what he loves, being who he has always been, kicking up the scent he is intoxicated by, tracking his shadows and howling for their surrender I will be at rest with the unfair, unjust hand he was dealt. We all want our pets to die peacefully, in their sleep, oblivious to pain, in their beds at home. Me, for my hellion child, I want it to be living the life he was most fulfilled by. Running in the woods, being caught up in the moment and living the life of the boy he has always been, unleashed, undying, and blissfully euphorically purposeful.

 

P.S. I have to post this after Jekyll's passing. It was not completed in time to see his paw prints on my doorstep any longer.

I can tell you all that he got to be the beagle he was up until his last moments with us. He was loved, on his rolling hills of lush green and endless possibilities always calling him yonder.

P.S. Jekyll passed away August 26, 2018. I miss him everyday. I honestly didn't know how I would, or could go on.... but I did.. and I'm still grateful for everyday together.

For more on Jekyll, his disease, my struggle to get through it, and what the other side looks like, please follow this blog. Or you can find me answering questions for free on Pawbly.com, or, sharing cases, and living life helping other companions at my Jarrettsville Vet Facebook page, or on my YouTube channel.

This Time Around. Coming To Terms With The Death of My Beloved Pup..

Veteran territory. I have been here before. The wound is soo deep it seems fresh, draining, life threatening. Death has been to visit me before. We haven't come to terms with each others presence, nor purpose. IT is still an unwelcome intruder. Albeit, ominous and undeniable, still IT calls, I collude, and yet, IT always wins, as I feign fractured and defeated. Again, and, again.

Our pets never live long enough. You can try to push the limits of pet-mortality with purchasing a parrot,, get yourself a good chance at a millennia, but dogs, if you stay mainstream canine, are lucky to see their teenage years, incredibly blessed if they hit two decades, and if you like to go big, or even "giant" you may not ever see double digits together.

I have learned that my heart can barely handle this pain every 10 years. I need, want, choose, hope, pray, beg, for a decade of longevity. Turns out my track record reflects this. "The older I get, the smaller my pets get." It is a hard-learned trade secret to try to spare me the loss every 5 years, or so, and it allows me to be able to carry them when their winter starts to wither and their bones can no longer support their ambulatory requirements.

The last few years has marred me with the loss of two beagles; Jekyll (just last month), and Savannah, a few years ago.

It took me weeks to get out of the grey fog I was flailing in with Savannah's loss. I just couldn't get out of the programmed repetitive daily motion I had become so accustomed to. The getting up at all times of the night. The managing her hysteria, messes, and failing functions. Undoing the habitual duties she set into my daily life took time. All the while desperate to go back to that place of interrupted sleep that her deprived mania brought just to have her back with me. But her loss was explainable, excusable, sensible. She had made it to 16. A ripe old age. A respectable age for any dog. She could be grieved but not denied a silver lining sentiment for surpassing the acceptable tenure. I could complain that her loss hurt, but I couldn't expect sympathy that she hadn't been afforded a long loving life.

Savannah

Jekyll, my most recent loss, another beagle, passed away at 8. He got cheated. I have anger lining that grief. Bitter shards to embalm him in. Seething pain to intern him with. Dust to damnation. A cursed cruel loss.

jek

The pit of my grief with his death lies here. The time frame cut too tragically short. The agony of desperate attempts to buy another "good" day for him. The exhaustion in losing the big battle. The responsibility I feel as having been the ultimate master of his destiny and purveyor of his curtain call. It is a terribly painful place to be. The ultimate responsibility can leave you with the lifetime of despair in second guessing and brow beating every previous decision. Sad couldn't begin to capture my angry bitterness. Except to mar it with also feeling responsible. That little fact made it crushing to swallow, impossible to move on, and fraught with such self doubting so that no piece of me was big enough to reassemble.

The days after his passing were simply about getting up, getting dressed, crying in the car to work, choking on grief and visible despair , all the while attempting to trudge into a day I dreaded facing. It also brought me back to why. The why of this profession? The immense magnitude of the responsibility we carry. The joy and the pain and the immeasurable grief it brings when you build a life around another.

The why we let them into our homes and hearts? The why we incorporate them into all parts of our lives? The why it is so easy to love them and yet so impossibly hard to lose them?
The why is the reason for everything we do as a parent and a veterinarian. It is important to always remember the WHY's?

I can love this pup, let him go knowing life too often works in its unfair ways, and not be ashamed, embarrassed or surprised when it repeats itself in my clients lives. If you can't feel a loss you cannot love. They are inseparable. It is what makes a vet a real person in the right profession for the right reasons.

I know this. I believe this. The tough part is living this when my own heart is shattered after losing the little one I loved so completely. It is grieving. Understandably. Grieving without withdrawal from ever opening your heart again is what I believe to be the most devastating part of pet loss. This is where I spend time talking to clients. It is normal to grieve. Grieve, however you need to, for you. Take time for yourself. Make a place to memorialize your pets life. A place to know you can go to to tell them how much you miss and love them. Live in the memories of your time together. But, try to not blame yourself. Try not to get stuck here. I know it is hard. I spent weeks here feeling like I, me the great powerful veterinary healer, could surely have saved my beloved boy. I had time, financial resources, access to the best specialists. Every tool to make him survive even the worst disease. It didn't happen, He left too soon. I lost him. I failed him.

Me and Jek at the oncologist's office.

That was exactly how I felt. Can you imagine how everyone else who doesn't have a decade of being a doctor, a clinic at their disposal, an Army of specialists, a bank account dedicated to dog care feels?

We will all lose a love because life always meets death. But giving up on loving again, ever having a pet again, that's where the real tragedy for me is.

So many clients give up after their pet dies. I think they feel it is too painful to go through again, or, like me they feel as if they will never find another pet who fills the shoes, measures up to the caliber of loyal/obedient/dedicated/wonderful there pet did. It is natural to not want to feel awful again. But not feel again? That's a loss that costs more than any heart should endure.

You cannot go through life living it if you try to not feel it,, good, bad and everything in between.

We all write the chapters of our own book. My book, each deep rich chapter of it has always been delineated and defined by the four legged family who made the tapestry the vivid, meaningful experience it was. The many homes, the varied geography, assorted jobs, were all the background that set my stage for each chapter whose central characters were always the dogs, cats, and pigs who made this life colorful and rich. They were, and are, the most important and meaningful pieces of the life I created and treasure. Some took up hundreds of pages. Some saw me through decades of questions trying to create the adult the kid was dreaming of. Some were short poems, a life too little, too fragile and too small to last past a haiku on an abbreviated page. But I am a richer, wiser, more content and accomplished thanks to their acceptance, love and wisdom.

You would think that with all of these chapters, all of the times I have been through loving and losing them that I would be better at grieving? My previous practice would make perfect assembly line efficiency of recovery? Yeah, not so much. I still invest whole heart immersed, drown in despair with loss, and trudge ugly through getting over it. Practice has not made perfect, unless that perfect implies pitiful.

The loss of Jekyll and Savannah took me weeks, months, longer/forever, to come to terms with. I will never "get over them." They were too monumental for that. All I wanted from myself when getting through their loss was to not give up. It was all I could hope for. They were loved. (I can say that with total conviction). There are millions (millions) of equally deserving (I can say that with complete honesty also) who never know a kind hand. I still have that to give. I may be broken and hurt, but I can still be kind to a furry face. I have to think beyond me. Society, civilization rests on this. It does transcend past human to human. Anyone who has ever loved a pet knows that. The world is better for all of us because we can love each other, regardless of size, shape, color, claws, fur, or fins. Love that is compassion is the key to life. All life and all living. This is what I believe, and remind myself of when reeling in loss.

Here's what happened to me after Jekyll passed away. I cried a lot, for days, weeks.  I told the people around me that while I appreciated their sympathy I couldn't talk about it at work. I had to stay busy and focused around the grief.

After two weeks I started trying to put my toes back in the water. I started looking at the pets in the shelters and at the local rescues. None of them were Jekyll. None of them pulled me into compulsion to step forward for them to come home with me. None of them were Jekyll. I was looking for that face. That smile. Those ears. Some tiny resemblance to jar me into adoption and out of affliction. I realized that obviously I wasn't really ready. I wanted to be ready. I just wasn't. I started spending loads of time with Charleston, my other dog. The left behind dog while we were all so focused on Jekyll. He had been neglected while Jek took so much of my time to monitor, treat, and obsess on. I owed him help in his grieving to. He was as heart broken as I was. We went on lots of walks, changed the room around. Got new toys. A little distracting helps pets adjust to a different routine and life. He got quiet and withdrawn. He missed his instigator and boisterous beagle brother. He was always the shadow behind that dynamic personality. He never saw his own sunshine  without Jekyll pointing the way.

Charlie was depressed.. But, he seemed more than withdrawn. He seemed deflated.. Vet mode mom kicked in (although it felt like paranoid vet mom). What would I do if he was dying too? Charlie's blood work revealed a low thyroid. I put him on medication to see if this would help resolve his lethargy, depression and sadness. It helped quite a lot. He started to wag again.

The next set of events changed everything. It added a new chapter and pulled me out of isolation and despair. A hurricane hit. Storm landed. (more on him soon). Hurricane Florence lands.

I added two very sick puppies within 3 weeks. We needed each other. I remembered I had a purpose outside sadness. I am alive again with them. I can go on. Being needed and loved helped me remember to start writing the next chapter, again. I was pulled out of grief by two sick puppies. I reinvested my energy into them, constructive caring, versus my grief soaked couch. Charlie, well it took about a week to realize they were residents, but when he could no longer ignore their incesant chew-bite instigation, he started to play. Within two weeks we stopped his thyroid meds (there is no medical study to back this, but its true). Charlie, and I, were back with the living.

I wasn't ready. I have no idea how long we will get together. But the time with them is far better than the wallowing in despair. We need each other, all of us. Loneliness is the gateway to despair and my puppies are waiting for me at home.

To all of those out there drowning in grief I hear you. I know. There is a way out. Reinvest your whole self in a pet. They need you as much as you need them. You can help each other to the shore. I send you all love and support.

For more information on who Jarrettsville Veterinary Center is please visit our Facebook page, or our website.

If you have a pet question or a story about your pet to share so we can start to help others who might be in the same situation you are (or were), please visit us at Pawbly.com. It is free to use and open to everyone.

If you want to learn more about pet care visit my YouTube channel here. 

The Distracted Hearts Recovery. Getting and Going On After Losing Your Pet.

It has been about a month of wallowing. Wallowing interrupted by abrupt volcanoes of tsunamic tears. Blubbering, hiding, angry, guilt-ridden crocodile tears.

I lost my pup over a month ago. It was excruciating....to put it all lightly.

Jekyl and his dearest admirer, Jitterbug

I don't know how to process this grieving any other way. I can drown in it, if I could find the time and lifestyle to get away with it. I could run, escape, evaporate either geographically or spiritually. Or, I can trudge on with a try.

I can try, try like the hell it is to just get through it.

I am one of those people. I talk to myself, provide affirmations projected from long ago, to be resurrected when they are needed, as I try to go on when life denies me the reprieve to stop, sit and process. I don't have a life that permits me to not to go forward, (even when I don't want to, and,even when I'm not so sure I can).

How do I try? I try to live the laudable jargon I spew professionally daily. Be the model grieving parent who doesn't go belly up begging for medication or evisceration. TRY, like hell, to be that person. That person who can, when I know I am simply the empty, broken, hollow other who can't and isn't.

But, after the weeks pass, the cards collect, the flowers retire, I grab my own bootstraps and jump back in. I am happier thrashing forward chaotically than wallowing and submerging. I start to put out subtle feelers for a soul in need to distract my shattered self.

Me and Jek leaving radiation.
That smile, those adoring eyes, his trust in me, and our bond..
I couldn't imagine how I would go on without these?

Distractions aren't contraindicated. Are they? What if they do good while providing much needed static-chatter-fixation? I could save a life. Maybe two, (and, maybe my own?), concurrently. Who needs a shrink to tell me I should take time to process my emotions? Truth is my emotions are eating me up from the inside. Making me want to dig my own hole to lay my own dead condolence flowers upon. Rest in peace my ass. I am tussling in bed in tears. There is no peace. There is emptiness. Quiet (I hate quiet), absence, loss. PAIN.

There were loads of options available to lessen the self-imposed grief ridden burden:

Vacation. (Check). Helped immensely, but left me dreading the deadness of the house I had to go back to.

Dwell. The worst option for me. It is like walking into a black hole. I get sucked in and there is no way out. I can dwell for 48 hours and then even I hate who I am looking at in the mirror.

Redirect. I took some time to sprinkle extra adoration on the remaining kids of the clan. My biggest secret to managing the death depression is to never have an empty nest. It is the work out plan without  the "congratulations, job well done!" display. Get up every morning and invest yourself in others. You may feel that life has left you, but, you are never left and alone.

Resurrect. Find something you put off while the hospice care, death dueling, and grief was governing your time. For me I got 5 books to keep me from getting too far into my own head. I scattered them like toys. One in all the places I was likely to get stuck. Bedroom, kitchen, tv room, and living room. Get lost in someone else's story, especially when your own is so bleak.

Repurpose. I fueled my empathy into the patients whose parents were in the same dilemma I was. Don't rush them, never judge their difficulty in saying goodbye, and for Pete's sake don't expect anyone to be as hard-boiled-headed as I was. Maybe 9 months of oncology wasn't everyone else's answer to compassionate care? Maybe a quick goodbye saves everyone from considering swallowing a lung full of wine? (There are always too many "maybes" to haunt me).

Suck Up Your Own Self-Pity, Jump Back Into Pet Parenting, and move on. I preach that, I better be able to follow it... I was soooooo hesitant to do it. I talked myself out of multiple adoptions because I was just to pitiful to do anything but cry about the millions of reasons this dog wasn't my dog. It took me apologizing to a lot of puppies for failing to be ready for them, and for them not being him.. (I know it wasn't their fault, but they were paying for it).

Even last night I was in the presence of the perfect beagle puppy. She was everything on my wish list,, and still I wanted to walk away. I could make up a million excuses. (I deserved every damned one of them. I hurt this bad). BUT, I stayed. I walked, I confessed (always be honest, especially with animal people, they get it). And, as I was about to walk away the foster mom pulled out the most brilliant trick in the book. She put her in my arms and rested her head on my shoulder. That little puppy surrendered. Went limp. Sold her soul to my broken heart and reminded me it can breathe again.

Fripp. Our first embrace

It was the slap to my egg-shelled wall of self protection I needed. It shattered into dust.

I realized that I might be able to move on.. might.. I realized I had to try. If I started to shut myself off from loving another pup again, making time for them again, I would just be this lonely,, still.

Those ears. She has those ears. The ears that Jekyll had. Long, soft, velvet, spilling around her gentle brown eyes, and able to be lowered to the sides of her smile when she needed them to elicit something from someone. She had them,, and,, I needed them back... I needed to be reminded that there is always another chapter to be written. I can write it in the dark, some Shakespearean eulogy to a devoted mom who died years ago as a tribute to perfection. Or, I can distract my heart and rewire my head. Post pictures of her in all of the cracks and gaps that sorrow brings.. and walk on the end of a leash to a horizon full of beagle-adventures awaiting.

Then; this photo;

became this photo,,

repeated, just a few weeks later.

And,, I realized I might be able to go on. Get through one loss, with the gain of (two) others. I could do it. It might not always be pretty, but what in real life really is? We all want it to be neat, tidy, manageable. Check a box on a list of the things a normal life brings. Accept them, get through them, and try to not let your mascara run in public. It's an expectation set up for failure.

Life isn't that easy. If you are really living it as you muddle through.

Jekyl begs for steak from Joe,
who oddly,,, repeated the photo a short few weeks later.

same begging puppies, and Joe in the same shirt...
and life goes on.

My advice; simple, take what you need to. Be kind to those who just don't live like we do. Those of us who love beyond what the norm thinks is reasonable. Be passionate. Grieve, full on ugly if you have to. Don't apologize for it. And, then try to see the beauty in the next generation. There is always another one to sink your heart and soul into. 

Meet Fripp and Storm. My new distractions, and, my heart full happiness. Jekyll would approve. He would adore her.

Jek

Fripp, on Jeks bed.

For more on grieving see these related blogs;

The Phantom Effect. Grieving the Loss Of Your Pet.

The Aftermath. The Days After Losing Your Pet.

How Do You Say Goodbye When You Can't Let Go?

For more on Jekyll's journey see these;

My Beloved Jekyll-Pup. May You Run Through The Fields Forever.

The Little Things. My Tribute To My Pup.

Slowing Down Without Giving up. The Last Days.

A Tribute To A Beagle.

Fripp, Storm, and Charleston, 11/3/18

To learn more about my journey please follow this blog. To learn more about pets and pet care please follow my YouTube channel. If you have a pet question, are a pet lover, or think that you would like to contribute to helping other pets across all socio-economic borders please join us at Pawbly.com. It is a free question and answer site dedicated to educating, empowering and inspiring pet people the world over.

I am also punching a clock for the shear love of wet noses everyday at Jarrettsville Vet,, the greatest little vet clinic in the solar system.  And for the best Facebook page take a lookie over here at Jarrettsville Vet Facebook.

The Phantom Effect. Grieving The Loss Of Your Pet.

Phantom limbs. That reminder of the piece you are missing. It is the lost limb your brain tells you is still there, ready to reach, itching in the sunshine, tickling, prickling, humming for function at the stump. Your brain remembers space, depth and tactile function of the appendage long after it is gone.  These days with all of our technology and science advancement the robotic arms are "learning" to replace the arm/leg by utilizing the brains remembrance and memories by tapping into that phantom calling.

For those of us who recently lost our beloved pets the "phantom theory" applies. My brain tells me Jekyll is still here. I can "feel" his presence in the sickening silence of the weight of this house.

I know he is there, on his bed, at the end of mine. He's just sleeping. He will get up when I do. He's waiting for me. He just pulled the aura of himself into his blankets. That's why it is so quiet. I can't hear his breathing. His "good morning!" wiggles, snorts, and bed dances. Maybe I am still asleep? But he's there. He's got to be there.

The bedroom is still the same. Some fear of losing all of him if I change the way he left it. There is a clean up of the stuff that his sickness required. The mounds of extra linens, the soiled bed pads, the piles of medications. I don't want to remember them. The went to others who need them. Like an organ transplant. They live on to help others.

Yesterday one of my patients, whom I fear is dying eminently, went home with a gift basket of hospice goods care of "Jekyll". My patients mom sobbing scared of losing her boy. I sobbed right along with her. We understand each other. There aren't words that need to be exchanged. Here is my basket of help and my outpouring of hope that he outlives the grimness surrounding his tired body.  We are both pet parents whose life centers around our beloved dogs. It is heart wrenching some days... to be reminded and still forced to reface the cancer again today in another brown eyed pup.

I sat in the car in the driveway last night. I didn't want to walk in the door. It is more raw here, in this house. At work I can stay busy enough to keep the whispers at bay. Kinetic energy helps keep the dam closed.

I sent the obligatory death announcements yesterday. I notified who I had to. His little army of angels.

"Hello All,

We are deeply saddened to announce that Jekyll was euthanized on Sunday morning. His edema and intractable HGE were no longer manageable and he was almost consistently frantically unhappy and unable to keep comfortable without constant sedation.  

The loss is almost more than we can express.

 We are so very grateful for the extra time that we got to spend with him because of everyone at VOSRC’s efforts.  

We would like to extend our sincere appreciation to all of the doctors and staff as many of you went out of your way to fit us in last minute, assist in desperate phone calls, and changes in his treatment plan on a moments notice when needed. 

There are lots of excellent vets in the world but there aren’t many who remain accessible 24/7, nor willing to think or act outside of the box. Even with all of this amazing care you never let me lose or abandon hope. In the end the greatest gift we give our clients is compassion and hope. You all exemplified that at every visit. 

Many thanks.

We miss our boy immensely. He was a magical spirit with a life that never would have been long enough. 

Sincerely 
Krista Magnifico and family."

I hear him wrestling out in the hostas. Sneaking the cat food. Running down the drive. Every bed in this house has him on it, upside down, piled in a circular nest to nuzzle his nose into. Charlie won't go onto them. He know "his" from "jeks". The weight of his 30 pounds next to my legs at night. He needs me near and I need to know he is sleeping contentedly.

When you get to the end of a life you remember. Your soul is inextricably tied. I know he is here. I know it because I can't forget he was.