Unconditional Love and Unconditional Grief

I wrote this blog post below over a year ago when one of my D2D dogs passed away ... I never published it, not sure why. It's certainly a lighter perspective than the one I have today having lost my precious Alexis. But I know I will return to that perspective again and be able to focus more on celebrating the life and not so much on mourning the death. Not to downplay any ones loss but death is part of life. We must endure the sorrows as well as the joys to fully experience this thing I call a wonderful life.

"2/7/10: People are often caught off guard by how grief stricken they are when they lose a pet. Many people experience more sadness and grief by the loss of a pet than a family member or friend. But if you think about it, it makes sense. Whats the worst possible loss one can experience? I'm guessing it's the loss of a child. Not to insult people with children in any way but many pet owners simulate their relationship with their dog as one of parent and child. How often have you heard someone say their dog is "my baby" or "part of the family" or my very own "we don't have kids, we have fur-kids" so it would stand to reason the level of grief is elevated. After all, in my estimation, there is no other being on the planet like a dog that relies solely upon us to take care of them for their entire life and in return gives us unconditional love and never judges us, never tries to change us, gets excited to see us return whether we leave for a minute or a month, doesn't get mad if we leave dishes in the sink or come home late or leave the toilet seat up, loves us for who we are and doesn't care if we lounge around in our sweats all weekend or how much we weigh or what our breath smells like (in fact they'd much rather we didn't brush out teeth quite so much) or if we hog the blankets, eat the last of the ice cream or drink out of the milk jug (just as long as we don't drink out of the toilet--hey that's their territory!). It's as true and honestly unconditional as you can get. No other relationship on earth is like that. No wonder our world crumbles when we lose our best friend. I know I will crumble when I lose Alexis but it's a fact of life that I can do nothing about so I will crumble but I will put the pieces back together. The pain in the end will be worth it for all the joy that preceded it. That's certainly not something we feel at the time of the loss but it's true anyway. There was a time that I thought about my late Cornelius in such a way that "this is it, I could never love another dog as much as I love him; no way no how" but never say never and here I am thinking that very thing about Alexis. But to be totally cheesy and coin a phrase from a very popular song, i know my heart will go on. My heart breaks wide open every time this earth loses a dog but each crack inside makes more room to love the next dog that comes into our life. "