It’s been almost a month without my beloved dog, Ellise. She was my everything, my anchor, my joy, my reason to fight, to hope, the love of my life. Losing her has shattered me in ways I can hardly put into words.
The grief is complicated by so many layers I can’t untangle; she wasn’t just my dog, she was my service companion, and without her, my quality of life has fallen apart. We had only one year together, she was barely fifteen months old, and yet she changed everything in me. It’s so unfair we only had that little time together.
I keep thinking how soon the time without her will equal the time we had, and that thought breaks me all over again. I don’t understand how someone can become such an essential part of your being so quickly. Nothing feels the same, and nothing ever will. With her, I experienced a love that was otherworldly, a connection beyond words, something that happens only once in a lifetime.
And the guilt is unbearable: that I brought her here, that maybe if we had stayed put, or gone somewhere else, anywhere else, she might still be alive. What happened exactly, I don’t know, maybe I’ll never know, and that not knowing will haunt me forever.
I definitely died with her that day. We both died, but only she stopped breathing. I’m mourning her loss, and also mourning the part of myself that could only breathe when she was near. The part that felt held, seen, loved, supported, and grounded in a kind of cosmic safety most people will never know.
The pain I’m living through now is not the end of my life; I wish it were, but it’s not. I know, and everybody says that this pain is proof that I have touched the highest frequency of existence: a taste of divine union, known only by a rare few in such a pure form.
And yes, afterward, Earth feels barren. People say I should learn to live with that union inside me, instead of through her presence, but it’s bullshit. Ellise opened me, and what hurts now is the echo of that opening, the expansion of a soul that can no longer be closed, but can no longer be filled again.
And yet I do not regret knowing her. I do not regret loving her. I do not regret bringing her home with me on that September day last year — even if now my heart breaks into a thousand pieces because of it. Because I became richer through her. I learned that such pure, such true love and connection exists — in realms most people will never, ever touch.
Also, I am wretched too, because now that she showed me what real love feels like, what true harmony can be — nothing else will ever be enough again. Not in this lifetime.
I suppose from here, this is life: to carry on out of courtesy, for those to whom I still matter. To keep walking, as one must. There will be better days, and worse days. But the truly good ones — the achingly beautiful ones — are gone, because Ellise isn’t here anymore.
And the truly terrible ones are gone too, because she can’t die again. I’ve lived through the best and the worst. What’s left now is simply to walk it through, with the quiet, hollow ease of someone who no longer cares much for anything… until I meet my little one again.
