Almost 4 Months And I Still Miss Him

As time goes on, obviously it gets easier when someone you love is gone. You adjust. You learn to push back the tears. You are able to talk about them without falling to pieces.

It's been almost four months since Gypsy died, and while I'm not a catatonic mess anymore, I'm still on the verge of crying at any given time. When we decorated for Christmas, we went to put up the stockings and there his was. I took it out and looked at it for a bit, and my husband said, "What should we do with it? Can it go?" Meaning, this insane man wanted to throw out my baby dog's stocking. I'd love to share whatever crack he is on to make him think I'd agree to something so crazy. It went back in the box - but not up on the mantle. And my tears were at the surface.

Every day when I come home from work, I open the door as if he's going to be there. I unlock it and then push in carefully, ready to block the mutt from running out of the house. And of course, he isn't there and then I get sad. That doesn't usually bring tears, because it's an every day thing. It's just a sadness that comes over me.

When I cook, I look for him. I made ziti the other night and had some extra grated mozzarella on the plate. I went to put it down on the floor for him to eat, because 100% of the time, when I'm cooking, he's looking for a handout. Obviously, he was not there so I threw the cheese out and got depressed. Pizza crust is another bummer. I eat the pizza and look to feed him the crust..and he's not there.

And sometimes, I long to sit on the couch under a blanket and watch tv, just chilling and relaxing, and have my puppy sit with me and cover him with the blanket too and just have him near me with his head on my lap. And of course that brings the tears, because that's what I miss the most. Just having a bestie who is happy just to be around me, as I was happy just to be around him,

I try to look at the pluses of not having a dog - primarily the freedom to go out until whatever time we want or to go away on vacation without needing a dog sitter, and the not-getting-up-twice-a-night-to-let-him-out thing (as we did for the last 15 years; that dog never learned to sleep through the night no matter what we did). But to me, the hole in my heart is the biggest minus and no amount of sleep or worry-free vacation could outweigh that.