On Grief as Gift

We lost our dog on Saturday morning.

As in, we had to make the utterly difficult decision to put her to sleep after her health rapidly and suddenly declined last week.

I think about the language of that. Lost. I wonder when and how humans decided to shape the linguistic borders of death. I think about how, in order to lose something you had to have first gained it. And then I think about what it means to gain something. A quick Google search tells me this: to obtain or secure, usually something desired, favourable, or profitable.

How would you describe what happens to you when a pet comes into your life?

Our dog, Semi, lived to be 14 years old. I had the privilege of being part of the second half of her life. Seven years. There is something satisfying about the symmetry of that to me. Of course, I would have preferred to have known her for her whole life; to see and experience her as a rambunctious pup, to participate in the requisite trials and tribulations that puppies often bring. The frustrations, the laughter, the exhaustion. But I know that to hope for this is to hope for a completely altered timeline, in which, my husband and I probably wouldn’t have even met, with the confines of time and space having been so radically manipulated. And then I would’ve never met Semi either.

I enjoy believing that the universe doles out only the precise amount of time and love that we’re allotted. We want for more without realizing that that wanting would have brought none at all. That even my grief, proportionate to my time with and love for Semi (which is inextricably tied to my time with and love for my husband) was already written, before I even knew of her or him. There was a sacred space held for all of us - for all of this - long before any of our paths crossed.

Death creeps and then comes all at once. Sort of like love. But perhaps that’s not true. I feel certain that I arrived to Semi already full of love for her. From the moment I met my now husband, countless stories of how sweet and gentle she was had been shared with me. Photos were sent that I stared adoringly at. I saw his capacity for overflowing love, for his ability to soften and allow tenderness to take the lead. Ahead of my first in-person meeting, I sent Semi a care package. A soft, plush blanket and brand new bed. I took our introduction seriously. I wanted to make a good impression. “I know how you much you love him,” I said. “I want you to know how much I love him, too.”

As our beloved dog’s health started to deteriorate further and further this past year, I began to anticipate this current moment that I’m in. Human naiveté took over and I deluded myself into thinking I could prepare my heart for it. Having had the privilege of loving many dogs in the past (Jinx, Annie, Charlie: I love and miss you all deeply), I, unfortunately, had also experienced the brutality of losing them. I knew how overwhelming and surprising the grief is. How jarring it was to reconcile that these seemingly steadfast presences in our lives were now somehow gone. It feels like animals are (or at least should be) exempt from the same whimpering endings that humans meet. Isn’t that precious? There I was trying to fight against the battering ram of existence; the same one that lightly taps taps taps at first and then finally beats our door down. The same one that comes for us all. And yet. I still wish. We all do, I think. We all hope against hope that our people, our animals - ourselves - will be the ones to hold the line successfully. We’ll outrun and outwit the will of fate and continue to live.

But that’s not how any of this works.

I sit here at our dining table and stare at our terrace, where just a few days ago our dog was. Where just a few days ago, she existed. And now, that same terrace is without her. We’re without her. But she’s not lost. She’s very much embedded in every corner and fiber of this house; I find her in everything, and in every turn of my neck, habit not yet gone from my muscles, eyes scanning for her on the terrace or by my husband’s side when he comes in the door. I find her in my son’s voice when he calls her name in the morning, “Come on, Semi! Let’s go!” I find her in his confused four year old eyes when he doesn’t find her in her usual spot, and in our combined tears as I comfort him as best I can. I see her in the fur still clinging to my pants in the laundry hamper, a bitter reminder of that terrifying Wednesday night emergency vet visit. I wince at the fact that that fur will soon be gone once the washing machine finishes its cycle. All cycles start and stop and they wipe clean the things that we sometimes so desperately want to stay. The fur I used to bemoan at finding all over the house and my clothes, I now miss with a frightening urgency. How foolish I was, I think. I should’ve known.

But I did know.

I miss my dog. I marvel at the reflection that I once didn’t know her and she didn’t know me and how miraculous it is that her absence feels like a hole has been carved out of me. I feel the totality of all 14 of her years in my heart, my grief disregarding the insignificant fact of me knowing her for just seven of those years. My grief holds all of it, all of her, and I thank God. I may have only had half of your life, Semi, but you filled all of mine. The same way I struggle to remember my life before I had my son, is the same way I struggle to remember the time before you came into my life. Your warmth was expansive and felt infinite because it is infinite. In the heavy, dense thick of the immediate aftershocks of your passing, my husband remarked that life is now distinguished by Life With Semi and Life After Semi. Not without. After. Because like I said, your life and love is infinite and I still feel it twist and turn in these spaces. That space that was held for all of us long before we even met hasn’t closed or collapsed with your death, because it was never bound by our pathetic and limited imaginations. That space has opened up, traversing across different planes of existence, inviting us to dive deeper into our grief, which is really an invitation to diver deeper into our love for each other.

So I hold my husband and son closer. I welcome and cherish their tears because it is proof that you’re still and will always be here. Our grief is a gift bestowed unto us by you. It’s a reminder that love will always live here. There is nothing to be lost because it’s always been here, always ready to be found.

Thank you for being here, Semi. Thank you for finding us.

I love you forever, my sweet girl.