“The reality is you will grieve forever. You don’t lose a loved one; you learn to live with it.” ~Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Whatsapp profile picture of my friend Diana hugging her dog GB.
Every time his name comes up on my phone, there they are. Two in a small square. I’ve seen this picture so many times I’ve really stopped looking at it.
until recently.
GB was not just a dog. He was part of the whole rhythm of their lives, morning and evening and all the ordinary hours in between that no one wanted to hold on to until they were gone.
How did GB come to be?
Diana’s husband spent his career in oil and gas. The job took them far, first to China, then to Thailand, a life where you’re always looking for a new city, a new grocery store, a new normal. They found GB while in China, although it almost didn’t happen that way.
Nicole, their daughter, had her heart set on a gold doodle. He knew exactly what he wanted. And then they went to the shelter, and she saw this little beagle, and that was the end of the golden doodle conversation. It was GB. completed
He was a handful. Sneaking and spoiling and being told what to do is completely indifferent. He had no business touching the food he entered. He destroys toilet paper for sport. He walked into a room he wasn’t supposed to be in and stared at you like you were in the wrong place. Diana constantly corrects him. GB has completely ignored him, each time, without any apparent offense.
I got to know Zibby the way you get to know a neighbor’s dog – piece by piece over time. Diana and I live in the same subdivision, and we’d run into each other on walks. There was GB, nose down, whatever scent caught his attention, ears perked up, totally engrossed in his own agenda. He had a way of making you laugh without even trying.
My daughter and I babysat her a few times when Diana and her husband made day trips to a neighboring town to visit Nicole at college. We’ll fill his pot, take him out, keep him company for a while. A small favor. The kind you don’t think twice about. Little did I know then how much I would later find myself thinking about that afternoon.
When Diana’s family returns to the States for good, GB comes with them and takes it immediately, like he always knew they’d end up here. He is old. A little slow. Still stubborn as ever. You can still be found when she wants something in the middle of whatever you’re doing.
You don’t think you’ll miss the little things. nails on the floor The way he plants himself next to you. Special chaos around him. And then the room goes quiet and you realize that the whole thing was.
When the damage piles up
Diana lost her father about a year before GB died.
Two completely different losses. And yet grief does not file things neatly. It just freezes. One loss sits next to another and suddenly you’re carrying more than you realized, more than you ever wanted to give to anyone.
Zibby was constant through those years. The walk had to happen. Feeding, vet visits, the daily business of caring for a dog that needs you. This kind of routine is underrated when you’re grieving. It gets you up. It gets you out. It keeps the day from collapsing in on itself. And then Zibby was gone, and all that went with him.
One morning we walked together. Our subdivision was quiet, the air still cool, that certain stillness before everyone else’s day began. We talked for a while and then we didn’t.
He stopped walking.
His eyes filled.
“Those we love are gone,” he said. “We feel sad. But what can we do? Life goes on. That’s the nature of life.”
He wasn’t brushing it off. He wasn’t pretending to be fine. He says it the way you say something you’ve flipped over so many times it’s smooth. Like a stone you’ve been carrying around for so long that it no longer has a sharp edge.
I didn’t say much. Had nothing to add.
Which I already knew
I lost my own father a few years ago.
I’m not someone who visibly disengages or talks easily about difficult things. But I think about him every day. Really, every day. Sometimes it’s a memory. Sometimes it’s just a feeling. Many times it’s a phrase I hear myself say and then recognize as his, something I’ve absorbed for over fifty years without realizing it’s happening.
It’s sadness that protects you. It never really ends. It just gets quieter. It stops being the only thing in the room and starts being something you carry in your pocket. You forget it’s there sometimes. And then something small happens, a song, a smell, a dog on a morning walk, and it’s there again.
When you’re in your fifties you learn that loss doesn’t happen all at once. It accumulates. a guardian a friend A pet. Some version of your life that you couldn’t properly say goodbye to. Stop waiting for you to feel ready because ready doesn’t appear. You just keep going, and at some point you notice that you’re managing it without anyone giving you credit for it.
Most people have no idea that the person walking next to them is quietly holding on.
The Way Things Come Back
Life after GB settled down slowly and without any announcement.
Nicole returns home after school, finds a job nearby. The house that had been so quiet was full of people again. Diana’s husband retired. The two of them fall into the small rhythms of their daily lives, cooking, tidying, unremarkable things that become the substance of things. None of this was about the dog. And somehow it was all connected.
Sadness does not go away. What it does is shift. It starts to feel less like an absence and more like a presence. You’re out for your morning walk and someone’s dog walks by and for just a second GB, snoring, is completely in its own world. It still catches you. But it also means something. Love is never lost. It just changes the address.
When Diana talks about GB now she goes back to everything, China, Thailand, years of building a life far from home, with this little beagle at the center of it all in whatever country it is. Missing him is not a sign of loss. It proves something real. Something that is important enough to leave a mark.
What do I know now?
If you’re in it right now, grieving a person or animal or a chapter in your life that closed without warning, here’s what I learned through it.
Don’t try to go the other way faster than you.
Sadness does not respond to stress. It shows up when it wants a photo on your phone, in a habit you didn’t even know you borrowed, on a normal Tuesday for no particular reason. You can’t cross it. You can let it come.
Say the names. tell the story
This is not terrible. That’s exactly what love is when it has nowhere obvious to go. Keeping stories alive keeps people alive, at least in the ways that still matter.
Focus on small details, not headline memories.
Certain ridiculous things. As GB regarded the rules as purely theoretical. My dad found the way he laughed really funny. It’s these small details that make absence feel lived in. They remind you that this was a real life, not just a loss.
Let routine keep you together.
When you don’t want to do anything, small simple things, a walk, a meal, a regular shape of a regular day, will take you further than you expect. Not because they fix something. Because they keep you functional while you find your footing again.
And believe that life will return.
It’s different than it was, yes. But not small. There is room for sadness and also room for good things. It turns out to be true even when it doesn’t seem remotely possible.
What doesn’t change
Diana’s WhatsApp picture is still the same.
Each of his messages brings GB back for a second. Those ears. that face Absolutely refuse to be anything other than yourself. I’m glad the photos are still there. Time flies regardless, but the people and animals we love are stuck in the stories we keep telling, in the names we say out loud, in the little things we move on without even realizing it.
Grief begins as absence. Somewhere along the way it becomes how you hold it.
We keep going because we do. Because life, as Diana said that quiet morning in our neighborhood, is going on. And in carrying the one we loved and lost, we become who we really are without realizing it.
Are you still carrying the loss that the world has gone too quickly?
** Names have been changed to protect privacy.
