Just Missing Her... Options

[Kim R.]

I have been really missing my girl something awful the last couple of days. I always miss her....but it has been amplified for some reason lately. Like today, she and Zada would always get their baths outside during the summer, and Sasha always loved it. Since Sasha has been gone, it has always been rather depressing during bath time...I'm always thinking about how she would be standing next to me and Zada waiting her turn (she always went 2nd because she really enjoyed it so I would take my time with her). Today, I was thinking about Sasha while I was giving Zada her bath, and I began to cry. I was thinking about how that would probably be the last outside bath of the summer this year, which led me to think about the passing of time, which then made me think about how long Sasha has been gone...and how long it will be until I see her again,etc., it was a pretty rough 'bathing session' to say the least. I actually found some comfort in the dumbest thing...the overspray of the hose started making a rainbow right next to Zada. I know that water makes rainbows, so I'm not saying that in itself was anything special, it just made me feel a little better and served as a reminder that Sasha will always be with me and that is what I need to try to think about.....

[Furkidlets' Mom]

Oh, Kim......what can I say? To hear you still feeling so poorly makes me want to give you such a big hug, in empathy and understanding. You know how I, too, suffered for so many years after we lost Sabin, and I suspect, like you, I will be here for at least as many, if not more, over Nissa now. ( I shudder to think, but I can't see how it would be otherwise, short of some kind of miracle ) I guess it's partly because there can be just so MANY triggers and the memories to go with them.....thousands....and yours is a soft, sensitive heart, just as mine is. Sometimes I think of this grieving process as similar to homeopathic principles, where they say that for each year that you've had a chronic condition, it can take about the same number of months for a remedy to heal you....so for each cherished memory we have of our babies, it can take ????? months or years for those pangs to settle down some.

So all I can really tell you is that perhaps you'll be like me ( and probably many others ) and it will be a few more years until those pangs aren't quite as heavily charged with emotion, although that emotion will never be lost entirely, similarly as Sasha's love for you and yours for her never will be, either. It will just be more liveable, more manageable, a softer pain, when you recall those cherished memories.

So I see both your future, and my own past and future here, and although that's hard to bear in and of itself, the healing takes as long as it takes, like it or not. I don't know if anyone has ever told you this, or if you may have read it somewhere, but it applies to so many of us in mourning that I think I should mention it. There is a perceived benefit to 'hanging onto' that pain, and that is because it is the last earthly/emotional connection we feel we have to our beloveds after they're 'gone'. In many ways, it honours our relationship with them, even if it brings us such misery. I discovered this for myself, with my grief over Sabin, and then I read about it years later, so knew it was true for me. I know how debilitating it can feel, but you're not alone in this, as many people who have lost their human children take YEARS to climb out of this pit...and of course, we think of our relationships to our furbabies as the same as those, so how unusual could it be? So try to be easy on yourself and just accept that this is how it might be for you, too. That alone may help soften things.....until you're ready, dear girl, you're just not.