Best Things Today: 7/1/23

July 1, 2023

Best Things Today:

July 1, 2023

1. This practice is very hard on sad days. We said goodbye to one very good boy today. I am grateful that his suffering was limited to one very bad night. And that his regular vet was in today and could confirm that what she saw matched what we knew. He made it to just a few weeks shy of the 12 months max that every vet we’ve talked to in the course of his heart failure events (which began mid-July last year) said to expect as the absolute best possible scenario. So we got the absolute best possible scenario. <she says to herself over and over like a mantra>

2. While we family members had to be in two different places today, we were able to spend the rest of the day together, wallowing. It’s hard to find comfort when your hurt is so icy hot. But we found comfort in a blanket pile on the giant couch. The couch filled with stains from when Devo would rub his face along the edge after eating dinner. ❤

3. Mother Nature agreed that this was a hard day, so she brought storms that stretched in a narrow band just across our area (we have missed other recent storms, it’s been a week since any rain) that hit us twice.

I think in general we don’t talk about grief all that much in our culture, and that harms all of us because it’s a real thing, feeling so exceptionally horrible as you experience a great loss. I don’t think we should avoid these hard feelings, or these hard conversations. It *sucks.* We are bereft. This is the first time our house has been dog-free in 13 years. The cats we have now have never known a dog-free house. 😞 It’s hard. But we’re here in the hard, and we’re feeling the feelings and toughing out the tough parts and just living through the suckage. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but a thought I’ve expressed to the family today is that it will never be as hard as today is. It won’t always hurt this bad. It already hurts the tiny tiniest bit less than it did an hour ago.

#BestThingsToday