I’ve been where you are.
Her name was Olive. This is why any of this exists.
For a long time after she died, I kept doing the small things. Standing at the back door at the hour she always wanted to go out. Buying the food she liked, once, without thinking. Stepping over a patch of floor where she used to lie, because my feet still believed she was there.
Nobody warns you about that part. They tell you it will get easier, and it does, eventually. They don’t tell you that grief for an animal arrives in these ordinary moments, in the middle of a Tuesday, while you’re doing nothing at all.
The hardest thing wasn’t the missing. It was how alone the missing felt.
People are kind, but they don’t quite know what to offer. Some of them say the thing about her being in a better place. Some say nothing, because they’re afraid of getting it wrong. And somewhere in the back of your own head there’s a voice asking whether you’re allowed to feel this much about a dog.
You are. She was there every day. She knew the sound of your car. Of course this hurts.
She was happiest in the long grass.
Why this exists
I looked for something to help, and mostly found two kinds of thing: clinical advice that read like a pamphlet, and sentimental pictures that didn’t touch what I was feeling.
What I wanted was someone to sit with me in it. Someone who wouldn’t rush me toward feeling better, or tell me which stage I was supposed to be in.
So I started writing what I wished someone had handed me: the guilt, the second-guessing, the strange relief, the birthday that comes around without them.
That’s all any of this is. The letter, the guide, the memorial garden. Company, and somewhere to put the love that has nowhere to go now.
If you’re reading this in the first raw days, start with the letter. It costs nothing and it asks nothing of you. And if you’d like somewhere for their name to live, you can make them a page in the memorial garden.
Whatever you do next, I’m glad you’re here rather than sitting with it on your own.
Summer