Re: 10 year old female beagle just diagnosed with Cushings
I'm not quite sure how they steal every bit of your heart but they do. And what's even more amazing is that once they steal it all the heart becomes even bigger. It's a paradox, it's magic. There were other dogs before Squirt and I loved each of them fully and still miss them as well. But Squirt was my heart-n-soul dog, the first one and the strongest one, and I didn't know if I could survive losing her much less love another completely. But I have. Both survived and found my heart had grown enough that others made a space of their own there. Some also became heart-n-soul dogs leaving behind their own empty space while enlarging my heart. I don't know how they do it. Squirt was the one who taught me how to truly love, to give myself completely. I think a large part of it is what Marianne said - the relationships were so simple and uncomplicated. Just an exchange of trust and love, unconditional, uncomplicated. For so long I couldn't imagine a world without Squirt, it just wasn't a thought that ever entered my mind until her latter years and then when it would come, that thought was unfathomable. Some part of me really believed she would live as long as I did I think. A part of me just couldn't accept anything else. But we do survive. Broken, yes but like those Japanese vessels repaired with gold stronger for it. Maybe that's what makes the stolen heart larger.
"May you know that absence is full of tender presence and that nothing is ever lost or forgotten." John O'Donahue, "Eternal Echoes"
Death is not a changing of worlds as most imagine, as much as the walls of this world infinitely expanding.