It’s been two weeks and three days since I said good-bye to my bestest boy, my beloved dog Dash.

I have never lost someone (furry or otherwise) so close to me, so integral to my day to day life, before now. And subsequently having my heart feel like it’s been pockmarked by a melon ball peeler.

This is a heart ache I have never felt before. A pressure – like someone sitting on my chest. A deep, chasm of ache. And it’s still there. Heartaches before made sense to me in a metaphorical sense, but now that I have felt this personally, I am struck by all the things and people in my life that will one day die and pull me apart again, just like this. One by one. Heart shattered. Heart aching. Each one a piece of love with no where to go.

Nothing lasts forever – this we all know, but don’t wish to think about. We are are here in the now – ephemeral wisps of flesh animated by some kind of *spark* that will one day leave.

With summer kicking off, I am slowly climbing out of the storm of grief. Slowly. Having two kids and busy summer activities and vacations to look forward to helps. Writing projects and working helps. But I still look over to where he should be, where I have expected him to be for almost 12 years, and not seeing him there is a hard pang to the gut.

The lack of his furry presence is most pronounced at night.

Dash never went to bed until I did, which is often late since I’m a night owl. He would lie on the living room rug while I wrote on the laptop late into the night. Sometimes he would get up and lie down in the stairwell, adding a big dramatic sigh, trying to tell me to go to bed already! But he never went upstairs. He was always by my side. Now he isn’t, and it’s quite lonely at night without him. I find I have never been more grateful for his steadfast and silent presence until now. Never realized how much it meant to have him there; my mind wandering into stories and writing for almost 12 years while he dozed at my feet.

The other hard thing without Dash is cheese.

The other day I ate the last of the block of cheddar cheese that I had bought while he was alive. The same cheese I had cut pieces off for him and shredded on top of tortilla chips under his watchful gaze. I almost didn’t eat it, trying to prolong the inevitable. But I did, and I cried many tears while I shredded the orange strips and blindly melted them in the microwave, bleary-eyed. Again, I have never in almost 12 years been alone in the kitchen prepping food, and now I am. I still reach down instinctively to pet him or drop him a nibble of shredded goods, and then I catch myself.

His lost presence is a hole. One that will take much time to heal. A hole that may never really fill back in the way it was. And I’m OK with that. I’ve given a piece of my heart away – willingly – in the act of loving him so deeply. As we do anyone that we love.

Those we love are knitted onto our hearts, our minds, our bodies. When they are gone, it is understandable that they would unravel us a bit. It’s supposed to happen; A give and take. The wheel of life pressing on, unrelenting, and us along with it. Give and take. Birth and death. The cycle of life.

It’s a privilege to participate in this great Give and Take. To enter here, to love greatly, and have our hearts shatter. Climb the peaks of joy, and traverse the valleys of grief. Moving through these emotions is tiring; in feeling them we are literally traveling through them. And what a journey they are.

I miss you, Dash, my first baby, my good boy. I’m so lucky to have known you and to have loved you. What else is life about? There is no journey greater.