I’ve felt tons of pain since I lost my dog Sawyer last month. I miss so many of the things we did together. Pets, snuggles, cuddles, holding him, kisses, playing together, sleeping near each other, and plenty more. Generally, I miss being around him physically and feeling him against me. Then there are all the sounds he made when sleeping, eating, running, walking, playing, and feeling excited, stressed, and sleepy. There’s seeing him look out the window, sleep on the floor or in one of his beds (or on various other things on the floor), enjoy the cool morning air outside, and chase squirrels and lizards in the backyard. I miss hearing him bark and yell out the front window, howl when he felt excited, whine in his sleep, knock on my door when he wanted to visit, playfully growl during playtime, and make all kinds of other unexpected, hilarious, and endearing sounds. Beyond all that, I miss his personality, all the little quirks he had, all the routines we established, and all of the many other wonderful things we did together. I miss him even more when I experience things that remind me of him. Walking by his spot at the window, thinking I heard him moving from one room to the next, seeing squirrels on the fence knowing how much he loved to bark at and chase them, and so on.
Sawyer often seemed to be my only friend and the only person who showed me love and kindness when everyone else seemed to be against me. Although I’ve got plenty of great people around me at this point, it’s still hard to be without my best friend ever and all the unconditional love he gave me during our life together. I’m still learning to trust people again, especially after being burned by so many people over the past several years. That’s even harder without my little buddy by my side.
I hate that my friendship with Sawyer ended in pain. The situations I most enjoy go well from beginning to end. If that can’t happen, I’d rather a situation start off in a rough way and get better as it goes so that it ends well. But my friendship with Sawyer began with joy the day I got him, was full of love for our life together, and ended with the greatest pain I’ve ever felt when he died. That painful ending tends to be most of what I remember these days and that makes it so hard for me to get through the day.
There’s also huge amounts of denial. Even though I understand intellectually he’s gone and isn’t coming back, emotionally that seems impossible. He must be the one dog that breaks the rule of not only dogs having short lives but also being mortal as well. I knew that his final day would come and also didn’t believe that it would come. Now I feel awful that it came and also for not believing that it did. I also feel lots of pain whenever I go through each first event without him: the first night I didn’t say good night to him, my first full day without him, my first full week without him, etc. There’s a lot of dread whenever I anticipate future moments such as my first full month without him, my first of each season without him, my first birthday without him, my first Christmas without him, etc.
Outside of my pain around losing Sawyer, I’m dealing with a lot of fear, anxiety, and depression that I thought I’d overcome long ago. All these things have been with me in some way or other for at least 10 years now. They were overshadowed by Sawyer and all the attention, affection, and love we gave each other during our time together. Now without that covering of love, all of this is coming back up. It’s extremely painful and difficult to deal with. However, unlike the past 11 years, I no longer have my little best friend to help me get through it. This is the most pain I’ve ever felt, the most difficult thing that’s ever happened to me, and by far my most painful loss. There’s nothing else in my life that I’ve cried over every day for more than a month. And he’s not here to help me get through any of it. He was here for every single thing that happened during our time together, whether good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant. Even though I have close family members and friends helping me during this time, it still seems like I’m on my own as I deal with this deep sense of emptiness and meaninglessness that’s come up so quickly, penetrated everything so deeply, and hangs over everything in my life, whether or not I’m consciously aware of it at any given moment.
There is a lot of fear around my future, my sense of self, and my identity. Who I am and how much I’ve defined myself in relation to others. Also realizing how much I leaned on Sawyer for strength, support, comfort, and feeling good about myself in the midst of a dark, cruel, mean world. Now that he’s gone, I’m wondering what that makes of me and how I’ll make it without him. I’m leaning on some close family members and friends as I work on developing that strength in myself. All the personal growth I underwent in my life occurred during my time with Sawyer. Now I’m doing my best to apply the lessons I learned (including the lessons he taught me) so I can handle life without him. I’m learning who I am without him as I work through lots of negativity. Some days are fairly easy but on many days I struggle to find meaning after losing my whole world and experiencing the sun going out in my life.
Distractions can take my mind off all of this for a while but not for long. Sooner or later, everything starts coming back in. Even on my most distracting days, the pain is still there and eventually becomes apparent once again. Distractions don’t get rid of the pain; when the distractions inevitably end (such as when I go to bed each night), the pain is still waiting for me to address it. If I continually decline to address it, it only gets worse. That’s why my most manageable days are the ones in which I work through the pain throughout the day. My most difficult days keep me constantly on the go with little to no time for myself, which tends to make everything explode out of me when I finally get some alone time.
What I’ve found helpful for healing during this time is breaking the pain up into manageable pieces and letting go of them one at a time. Sometimes that’s not possible as the pain feels absolutely overwhelming. When that happens, I’ll lie down and let it run; it always becomes more manageable after 10-15 minutes. When the pain isn’t overwhelming, I’m able to focus on certain parts of it. There’s often a desire to hold Sawyer, pet him, cuddle him, pick him up, snuggle him, be around him, etc. Along with that comes pain that I can’t do any of that anymore. I’ll let that desire and the accompanying pain be there until they run out. There’s a lot of fear over what will happen to me now and how my life will go without my best buddy getting me through the hard times and creating a lot of the good times. I can let that fear run out. I also let run out the anger and frustration at the fact that dogs live such short lives which often end by a one-way trip to the vet. I’ll also work through the anger and frustration at the vets who took Sawyer’s life and even Sawyer himself for leaving me, having lots of health issues, giving us just a few more days together instead of a week when I asked him to hold on a while longer, and giving us just 11 years together instead of many more like plenty of other humans get with their animal friends. Then I might feel a lot of guilt over things I did to Sawyer or didn’t do for him; I’ll let that come up and run its course. This also applies to the guilt I feel about feeling all those frustrations, especially the ones I feel toward Sawyer. I do my best to let all of that run out as it comes up so I don’t get overwhelmed by it all.
When I’m deeply focused and feeling relatively good, I can let multiple emotions come up and run out at the same time (such as anger and fear or depression and anxiety). However, when the emotions are too strong or I feel too upset, I’ll focus on whichever emotion seems to have the most energy behind it. I’ll let that emotion run until it’s all gone for the time being or until it’s lessened enough for another emotion to come up for release.
Sometimes I’ll sit or lie down and let the tears run, whether it’s a slight tearing up, heavy sobbing, or something in between. Music has been incredibly helpful for bringing on the tears during this time. Sometimes simply listening to a moving song is enough. When it’s not, singing along almost always does the trick; even if I break down in the middle of the song, I’ll keep singing it through the tears as best as I can until it’s over. A lot of songs that I already loved and made me cry even before losing Sawyer now make me cry even harder and even more easily. I recently listened to “You Are My Sunshine”, which I’ve heard a lot before this year. The first time I listened to it after Sawyer’s death, I cried profusely; I cried even more when I sang it to Sawyer next to his spot in the backyard. Music helps me find different areas within me that need to be healed, areas that I may otherwise miss. I’ll find one of those areas and work on it repeatedly until it seems like it’s good to go. Then I’ll do the same with a new area. Sometimes I’ll focus on the same area but from different angles. I’ll clean out the pain from one angle (anger) and then switch to another angle (depression) as my mood changes. That’s often how I find an area that I thought was good to go but actually needs more attention.
Here are some other songs I’ve listened to and sang a lot this past month to help me bring up and work through sadness: “Photographs and Memories”, “Time in a Bottle”, “Saying Goodbye”, “We’ve Got It All”, “Time of Your Life”, “We’ve Got Tonight”, “Just One Person”, “Gary Come Home”, “Believe Me”, “Save Tonight”, “Bridge over Troubled Water”, “Oo-De-Lally”, “What a Wonderful World”, “Remember Me”, “These Are The Days Of Our Lives”, and “The Goodbye Song”.
I also work on letting my frustration run out. Frustration and even anger can come up when I see people living happily with their pets, spouses, families, and other things I wish I had right now. Instead, I’m still dealing with the loss of my best friend ever and wondering why I don’t get to enjoy what so many other people have.
A lot of that frustration comes up when someone says they “know what it’s like” or “know how I feel”. Nobody knows what it’s like to be me just as I don’t know what it’s like to be anybody else. Even if someone else has lost a beloved dog or other animal friend, their pain is still different than mine. They’re not me and they didn’t have the relationship with Sawyer that I did; even those who spent as much time with Sawyer as I did still related to him in their own special ways, so their pain is different than mine. Even if they are or have been in great pain from losing an animal friend, why would that make me feel better? Why would I find comfort in knowing that other people are (or were) also hurting tremendously? I don’t. All that does is make me feel worse. I also feel worse and frustrated when someone says that this pain will never go away. Again, they don’t know what it’s like to be me or what I’ve overcome in the past, so how can they know what will or won’t be the case for me? Plus the idea of living the rest of my life with this deep, agonizing pain is unthinkable to me. I’ve already noticed a big decrease in the pain since I’ve worked through so much of it for just over a month now. I have to believe that it’ll continue going down until it eventually goes away completely. Otherwise my life will be one giant mess of misery, and I don’t want to live that way.
There’s a lot of frustration I still feel toward myself. Much of that frustration comes from guilt over not doing more for Sawyer, not doing some things that I now wish I had, leaving his care mostly to other family members, letting other folks take him outside and on walks (especially in his final few days; I so wish I’d gone on at least one walk with him once I knew his time was limited), not seeing if there was more that could have been done to give him extra life or extra quality of life toward the end, and doing some things to him that I wish I hadn’t done.
I feel lots of guilt over the healing process itself, such as crying less and crying less easily at this point in my recovery. Much of what I do when healing involves releasing guilt over feeling better and wanting to feel better, as if that’s a betrayal of Sawyer and all the love we shared. As if our shared journey would mean nothing or I’d lose his love, the lessons he taught me, and even my memories I have of him if I heal and release the pain.
Most days I’ll sit in my car for a bit while wearing earplugs and just yell as loud as I can until I feel better. This lets me get out my frustration so I’m not hurting myself by holding it in or hurting somebody else by taking out my feelings on them. That plus following it up with 15 minutes of letting go on the couch can turn my mood around incredibly quickly.
I’ve also found healing from going into certain fears I had about Sawyer during his life that, fortunately, never came to pass. I thought I’d fully dealt with these fears during his life but I now know I hadn’t. Whenever I would leave the house, whether it was for a big trip lasting more than a week or just a few minutes to run to the store, I had a lot of fear that Sawyer would die while I was gone and I wouldn’t be able to be there with him to say goodbye in his final moments. I was there for his final goodbye so I can let that fear run out. The same goes for fears about him running away, being kidnapped, dying a horrible death, and so on. None of that came to pass so I can let those fears and anxieties come up and run their course so I can finally be free from them.
In addition to working on releasing pain from the past, I’ve also found it helpful to release the pain of a future that won’t be. For instance, Sawyer won’t be around to see me get married, meet my future kids, watch me publish any of my books, or join me on my big road trip around the US. I’ve been doing my best to accept that there won’t be any pictures of Sawyer with my kids and he won’t be riding shotgun with me on the open road. It helps to acknowledge and accept Sawyer’s age and health issues instead of thinking of him as a perpetually young pup in stellar health. Recognizing that my idea of him didn’t always line up with reality, especially in his final few years and months, is painful but also freeing.
Lately, I’ve gotten reminders to welcome the positive emotions and experiences. Sometimes it’s hard for me to avoid pushing to the side any peace, laughter, happiness, contentment, joy, relief, or any other positive emotions that arise when I dance, visit with a friend, think of a fun memory of Sawyer, or do something else that I enjoy. Letting all the good stuff come up helps and it’s getting easier the more I work through everything.
I find it extra difficult to work through sadness and depression. Depression in particular is a huge challenge because, along with sadness, there’s not a lot of energy behind those emotions. That makes it harder for me to notice them and also know if I’m actually working through them. When there’s lots of energy behind an emotion (such as with fear or anger), it’s easy to notice them, let them run, and tell when they’ve run out or at least been reduced. It’s a lot harder to do that with sadness and depression. Plus depression and sadness both have a lot of heaviness to them that can overwhelm and drag me down, especially depression. That makes it harder to do anything, especially let go of the depression. Depression feels like some heavy cloud of dread or sense of foreboding that hangs around me and colors everything in a dark light. That’s much harder for me to handle than, say, the paralyzing grip of fear or the fire of anger.
Plus I’m used to feeling depressed after many years of that being my default state. There have been only a handful of occasions in the past few years in which my normal state was one of lightness, joy, and peace. It’s easy to default to that depressed state, especially when I’m feeling a ton of negativity and am having a hard time working through it. It feels familiar and even comfortable to an extent because it’s what I know. That’s another reason it can be hard for me to notice and work through depression. This past month has brought up a lot of old depression that I thought I’d dealt with but hadn’t actually fully released, in addition to new depression from losing Sawyer and not having him here to help me through this loss; it’s also brought up fear over not having him anymore, sadness around the idea of him being gone, frustration at losing him, etc. Things that I had mostly brushed to the side over the course of our life together. If there’s anything good about this time, it’s that all these emotions are now coming up for me to release and heal from at last. If I continue moving forward with all of that, I’ll be feeling even better overall and feeling better more consistently than I’ve ever been before. Even better than how I was feeling shortly before Sawyer’s death earlier this year and last year when I worked through a ton of negativity shortly before my birthday.
I’ve also found healing through conversations with people I trust, things I write in my morning writings, and reminders that come up as I let go. All of that plus everything else I described above has helped tremendously. I’m not out of the woods yet but I do overall feel much better than I did the first few weeks after losing Sawyer and way better than I did the first few days. This feels similar to my progression with a lot of pain that I worked through in 2020, only this pain is much deeper, much greater, and is taking much longer to work through even though I’m dedicating much more time to working through it. I do my best to take things one day at a time and even one moment at a time on the hard days. From past experience working through deep pain, I know I’ll keep feeling better as long as I keep working through it. Sawyer would want me to heal and feel good, so that’s exactly what I’ll do.
