I'm sorry, I'm lost - #73
Holding him in my heart.
We lost him. I’m so sorry.
The last time I grieved a pet, I grieved alone. Alistaire was four. He was my roommate’s idea — a way to recover after the tumor surgery. A friend to help with the panic attacks.
When Al went missing, I spent my nights on the stairway to our door, calling into the night. I was alone. I’d lost the friend who’d carried me from DC to New York to Boulder. I put flyers on every car, every pole. I called every shelter on the Front Range. I grieved him alone.
Last night, Ben and I could grieve together. A special light had gone out, but we saw it. We saw his flickering candle when his eyes were sealed shut with infection, when most of his littermates had passed their only days dying abandoned on the side of the road. And we protected that light. We gave him a home. It was the best year and a half — for all of us.
Finn is walking around the house, looking. It pulls me into the grips of despair to hear him call into the emptiness of the house, to call for his friend.
Snoots was the strangest little guy. He was a real howler, insisted on peeing in an ash litter box, climbed the monstera like a jungle gym, slept with his arms out like little chicken wings, and god was he ours. Strange, big-hearted, he was our friend.
Grief has me seeing him in the tinsel dangling from the Christmas tree we haven’t taken down because he loved laying under it. It has me hiding from his favorite spots. It has me wanting to burn the clothes I wore when I found out he died. It has me wanting to starve myself. It has me gutted, inside out.
But grief comes where love grew. When the tree falls, its needles and its bark and its branches return to the soil, and from them, something else.
We want a baby this year. And a puppy. And when Snoots tells us its OK, we’ll look for someone he would’ve loved. Someone wild and cuddly. Someone who chases the dogs and scales the logs and watches over us from the perches up high. A little mountain maniac to bring us back to life.
I’m going to take a break from the newsletter for a bit. I’ll be back on the 29th.
But briefly, I do want to say, thank you for being my friends. Thank you for being his.
Again, I’m just so sorry. Take all the time you need to grieve. We’ll be here.
We lost our Peanut kitty last April. It was heartbreaking to come home from the vet without her and watch our other cat, Nimbus, search for her. Every meal time, he’d wander the house searching her out because she was the one who ate first while he patiently waited his turn. Finally, he turned to us. He marched over from his full food dish, yowling to ask, “Where is she?”
Two days of this, and finally I sat him on my lap, kissed his furry head, and with tears in my eyes told him what happened. I explained that she wasn’t coming back home, not as we knew her before.
He tilted his head, booped my nose, and never searched or yowled for her again. He’s been our shadow, our cuddly companion, our solo alarm ever since. I still think I see her trotting down the hall, or hear her hunting toys in the night.
To love is to lose. To risk everything when grief is all but guaranteed. But it’s worth it, and we’d do it all over again, every time. ♥️
So many of us in your community get this experience, we really do. We know how much it means to share this beautiful, close connection to our animal company. They are our best friends.
Loving pets comes with so many soulful challenges, and delights. Receiving the preciousness of our time with them, of being present for their unique ways, letting ourselves be open to all the love and mess they bring gives us a window into growing ourselves. We believe in our resilient capacities to face their mortality, and the soulful journey that awaits when we agree to love.
There’s so many lives to have in loving someone. The anticipation and space making before they arrive. The lived experience with them. The memories, mourning when they leave us. You’ll always have Snoots, even in this the new, heartbreaking realm of your separation.
I feel for you Kelton. Thank you for writing about your friend Snoots xx