Sorry it's been a while

03 September 2022

Hello Tennessee,

It’s me.  Today is the sixty-second day since you left this earth.  I miss you every day.  Some more than others.

Sorry I have not written in a while.  I write to help ease my grief which has been better over the last week.  Not to say I have stopped grieving you.  I think about you often and the tears still come.  It is just that I am able to cope with missing you a little better.  I will always miss you.  My heartbreak of losing you just gets easier to manage.  But every now and again it grabs me and wrenches my heart.

I am learning a lot about how to manage losing you.  I know you prepared me for the loss, but nothing prepared me for the actual moment you took your last breath.  I remember it precisely.  It's as if your passing was just yesterday.  I doubt I will ever forget the way you passed.  Sometimes I wake up at 3:30 am and reach for you but to my disappointment I only find Stella.  That was the exact time when you became non-responsive.

I had a dream last night.  We were travelling somewhere, on a bus.  Our tickets were for separate seats.  Your seat was at the back of the bus while mine was toward the front.  I felt really unsettled leaving you back there.  As I woke in the morning, I realized the dream was just a manifestation of feeling my loss.  By leaving you at the back of the bus I was moving forward.  Sitting toward the front of the bus represents progression of my life past you.  Not sure how this is going to happen, but I take steps every day to help me.

They say a grieving person needs to visualize his life without his lost partner.  I have been thinking of what this looks like and cannot come to a clear vision.  There are a few things I know.  The first is my home is in Pinetop.  I am leaving the desert behind.  The second is life with the dogs.  Whatever I decide it includes both pups.  I don't ever want to leave them behind.  So even though the thought of travel passes through my mind, I won't go anywhere without them.  The consulting and training work I was doing is gone for now.  I'm OK with this because these Danes give me so much company and help motivate me to wake up, take a walk, and go to the venues where they are welcome.  

You would be so proud of Stella.  Despite all the puppy-ness we suffered with her, she is becoming the model dog.  Of course nothing compared to Lexi the perfect dog.  Stella is starting to respect my personal space and no longer has a spaz attack when crossing-by another dog.  I was able to take the two of them to Woodland Lake Park without event.  We walked the lake and when meeting other pups coming at us, I stopped them, placed in a sit and they were perfect.

I decided to have one of the Woodland Lake benches marked in your honor.  Someplace I can go sit and enjoy the lake and remember you.  I will also buy a brick at the Help in Healing Home.  Not sure what I want the inscriptions to say.  I should have asked you when you were alive. I know you don't like the idea, but since you did not allow me to have any memorial, I feel the need to do something.  So these acts are for me not you.

I am eating better, not drinking so much red wine and overall trying to take better care of my health.  I am embarrassed to  tell you this, but I am doing it for the dogs.  If I should die before them it would break my heart.  I am saddened that I did not come to this epiphany while you were still living.  I should of taken better care of my body for you rather than for the dogs.  There goes that grieving heart self-doubt again.  

I hope you are enjoying heaven.  I will be there soon - not too soon - but soon.

Love,

Greg