I came home monday night, 3/11/13, and walked in the door and my dog wasn't there to greet me. Then I slept in my bed for the first time without my dog. I woke up the next morning and she wasn't jumping on and off my bed urging me to get up and let her out. I haven't opened the door from my bedroom to the backyard since she was here. I was expecting to feel sad at those predictable times but there have been so many more moments in the last two weeks when I've been surprised by grief.
As I made final preparations to leave for work on 3/12/13, my head automatically turned towards her bowls. (I always checked to see if she needed food and water right before I left for work.) But her bowls weren't there and I was surprised by grief.
Lunch time on 3/12/13 came and I couldn't go home. I didn't want to face the silence. or that ticking clock. So I ate out and went straight back to work. Then 5:30pm came and I couldn't go home. I was surprised by my compulsion to avoid the place I used to love to be the most. But that was before she died. So I went to a friend's house and hid for the evening. I thought I'd avoided feeling sad because I changed my routine. But when I got in the car at 10pm, I was again surprised by grief, and cried most of that 20 minute drive home.
Wednesday morning, two days after she died, I got through my morning routine and made it to work on time. But by 9am I was overcome. Sobbing in my cubicle, I knew I was getting no work done and needed to get out of there. So I got in my car and drove to my grandma's. I was not only completely surprised by grief, I felt suffocated and paralyzed by it. I didn't start breathing evenly until I was half way to Reedley.
My grandma gives me hope. No matter what is going on in my life, she always gives me hope. I know that is why my instinct was to flee to her that morning. I had lost it. I was in a hole and couldn't find a way out. So she jumped in the hole with me and was my guide because she's been in that same hole before and knows the way out.
You see, my grandpa died in 1994 and she has been without him for over 19 years. She still misses him everyday. Her advice to me was that it is okay to feel sad, it is good to grieve, but it is important to keep from feeling sorry for myself. In other words, sit in the middle of your pain but then get up and walk through it. She said that with time my routines would change and everyday life would get easier to bear. Wisdom that soothed my suffocated soul and allowed my heartbeat to regulate.
I told her some of the things I am thinking about doing now that I won't need to be home to take care of her. I can volunteer, go back to school, join a gym (yes, i was feeling that desperate), get more involved in church, etc. My grandma totally validated all of those options and was even excited for me at the new possibliities in front of me. That's when I felt the hope return and that's how she guided me out of the hole.
With every first that has happened without my dog, (my first lunch at home, first cheezits, first pizza, first Friday morning off, and today, my first Saturday at home), I am still surprised by grief as the waves keep on coming. I mowed my back lawn today and half way through I started crying because it was the first time I'd mowed the lawn or even walked around in the backyard since she died. She wasn't anxiously waiting at the door to be let out to see and sniff out how I'd changed her territory. She won't be patrolling the yard or barking at the neighbor dogs through the fence.
I have to constantly remind myself that she wasn't just a dog and that 10 1/2 years together is a long time. It's okay to be feel the loss and it's okay to be surprised by grief.
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