missing you horribly
Hi Nala,
I miss you more than I ever thought I might. You’ve strangely been gone for four long months yet they feel so short, too. In fact, it sort of feels like yesterday that we got home in anticipation of seeing you only to walk in and find your body already stiff. I think about that moment every now and then, quite randomly, and I don’t typically know how to grapple with it.
I mourned you vehemently for a few days and then the emotion weirdly went away. I couldn’t cry anymore or even feel very sad. I’d tell people you died and would feel calloused and horrible because I wouldn’t shed a tear. But those first few days were atrocious. A couple people can attest to that. I remember waking up the first morning you weren’t able to wake up yourself and skitter over to the spot of sunlight on the wooden floor, and I could hardly bear it. I had never felt that feeling of just immense grief and dread and agony and heartbreak. My soulmate was gone and there was this gaping hole inside of myself. As if a massive piece of my past was no longer real, you know?
After the numbness took over, I sort of avoided thinking about it all. As terrible as that sounds, but I guess it makes sense why I couldn’t confront your lifeless body in the freezer. I denied it all so much that I almost began to believe I’d killed you myself by putting you in that icebox, because, well, how could you have been dead before that? I just felt like it was unimaginable. Maybe it was just a bad nightmare and didn’t really happen. Maybe you were just sleeping and we made a bad call and caused death to fall upon you by trapping you in the cold darkness.
I tried to write to you after it happened but I only got out a couple sentences. I said “I had no real opportunity to say goodbye or allow you to know I was there for you, because I wasn’t.” This sort of summed up my feeling. The grief I felt and still do feel for not being there in your last moments or the entire week leading up to it is immeasurable. But I can’t focus on that or I’ll go crazy because there’s nothing I can do or anyone can do, so maybe I’ll be able to apologize to you someday when I die and see you again.
Anyway, though, I just wanted to commemorate the fact that you’ve been gone from this yucky earth for four whole months. That’s 122 days that you’ve been in heaven! I’ll try to think of it that way. But, yes, so thank you for all you did in your life, Nala. You were pretty great.
Missing you horribly,
K