In 5 days it will be a month since he passed and it still feels like yesterday he was here. I still wake up in the morning looking for him or when I get food out of the fridge expecting him to come looking for butter. I miss my cat to hell and most days I’m good at keeping myself occupied and distracted but today it just didn’t work and I longed for him.
Here a picture of him for you hexbear I don’t think I ever shared. I love you Wolfie.
I never thought I would grieve for my bearded dragon as much as I did, but I realized with time that it was because so much of my very identity had been formed around her being something strange and unique that I took care of. People asked me about her, they would want to see the lizard when they came over, I had to make trips to the speciality pet store that sold proper food for her, etc. When she wasn’t around, so many parts of my daily life brought her back to my thoughts so often that it was like a raw spot that couldn’t quite scab over.
One thing that worked for me was paradoxically diving into those feelings of longing, letting my imagination for just a moment convince itself that I really was feeling her little claws in my palm again, and weirdly it worked for me well enough to smooth over the grieving process, which is neurologically very similar to the process of learning and which takes real resources to do.
Yeah I still haven’t throw out his things and I have his litter in the pan for him. I guess it’s like my mom, I still haven’t gotten rid of her things either.