Time is a slippery thing. It’s giving me mind whiplash today.
A week ago was my last “normal” morning with Coco. She’d had trouble sleeping the night before. I was worried. But, we woke up that morning and she was happy to see me. A stretch in bed, a little of her favorite move—the wiggle worm—and then running into my arms when I gestured her to and we went out to potty, made breakfast, she ate it all up, and then I took her back to bed for “second sleep.”
It seems like years ago, and it seems like yesterday. I can both hold that memory so vividly in my mind…but it feels like it’s from a lifetime ago.
She seemed okay. Better than the night before when she couldn’t stop tossing and turning in bed until we got her some pain and sleepy meds (which she oddly finally passed out before getting…but we gave to her anyway). But, by the time Liz took her for a walk, it was obvious to her that she was getting worse. She pulled the trigger to take her in to the ER and not wait until Wednesday. Coco never came home again.
I’m still wrapping my head around it all. It’s so obviously fresh to me, thinking all that happened just a week ago. It’s an open wound. Still bleeding.
But…it was a little better today. Going back to work helped. A couple other things helped. I didn’t cry today. I almost did in the morning, just thinking about all of that above…but not quite.
I did a meditation session before doing a bit of writing. It was a guided one, with the dude asking me to go to the most relaxing place I can imagine. I always see this particular part of Humboldt Redwood State Park near the Albee Creek campground that I visited as a kid a couple times and man…it really left an impression on me, I guess. It’s my magic space…
And Coco was there with me. We laid down in a hammock together after walking through the woods together, and she fell asleep on my chest. It felt so good, imagining that. And then the sun came out outside my office as the session was finishing, and that felt good, too.
Glimpses, you guys. Glimpses of calming down. Beating back the panic. Holding the grief and sadness in their proper, accessible, calm state rather than as a crashing wave. Glimpses of a life without Coco. A life. Not just pain. Pain and joy. At the same time. Or put more practically: me being able to do my shit again.
Sigh.
It’s a ways off still. I can feel that. But…
Today was better.
I miss you Coco. So, so sooooo much. I wish you were in bed next to me right now, asleep, breathing, smelling so good and feeling so warm, pressed up against me so that you never lose me. Oh, how I want that so bad.
I love you.