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Today marks the 18-month anniversary of losing my best pal, Rocky. It has gone by extremely fast. I could give you a play-by-play verbatim of everything that transpired on March 24, 2023. Well, if we’re being honest, I could probably do that for the 10 weeks leading up to that date. Nobody really tells you how absolutely devastating it is to have to say goodbye to your soul dog.
Rocky died suddenly. And suddenly, life changed in the most unimaginable ways.
You know, I never realized the love Rocky had in his eyes for me until he was gone & I’ve looked through pictures.
My dog lives in heaven now & some days that’s all I can feel & think about, especially when we get near the 24th of each month. Some days it doesn’t feel in my face, but when it feels in your face it feels in your face because you can’t focus on anything else. You don’t really think about anything else, and even though you might not be talking about it, that feeling is there.
The world didn’t stop when Rocky passed away. My world stopped when he passed away, but the world didn’t stop when he passed away, and that was hard. You think you’re gonna have time to feel grief, you think you’re gonna have time to feel loss, in my mind I thought of it as a pause. I thought I would get a pause to grieve … you don’t get that, because the world keeps turning after your loved one passes away & that’s hard.
Big moments – be they positive or negative – still happen after your loved one passes away, even when they’re not there for it & that’s hard. No amount of wishing they were here can make them come back & that’s hard.
I don’t think any kind of warning to what happened would have helped. I think I still would have wanted the pause & I would still be upset that I didn’t get it & I think that’s okay. My world ended after Rocky passed away, or at least it felt like it did. So watching the world continue to turn afterwards was really hard.
Having a soul dog is such a beautiful but heartbreaking feeling. Knowing that this animal is your whole world, but one day, it will be taken away from you, and you’ll be left with just the memories of a true soul pet that is irreplaceable.
I’ve never been the same since Rocky died. There’s a melancholy in me that never goes away. I’m 50% happy & 50% sad at any given moment, and the only advice I can give people for when you lose someone/a pet like that is you won’t ever get over it. And the more you know that & embrace it, the better off you are.