“The truth is that you will grieve forever. You will not be able to” go through “the loss of a loved one, you will learn to live with it.” ~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
My friend Diana’s WhatsApp profile picture is of her hugging her Zibby dog.
Every time her name appears on my phone, it is there. They are both in a small square. I saw that picture many times and I stopped looking at it very much.
Until recently.
Zibby is not just a dog. She is part of the rhythm of their lives, morning and evening and all normal hours in space that no one thought would continue until they go.
How Zibby Became
Diana’s husband spent his career in oil and gas. Work has taken them far, first to China, then to Thailand, the kind of life where you are always looking for a new city, a new normal grocery store. They got Zibby while they were in China, though it almost never happened as it did.
Their daughter Nicole made her heart over a golden doodle. She knew exactly what she wanted. And then they went to the shelter and she saw this little tiger and that was the end of the golden doodle conversation. It is Zibby. Ready.
She is a handful. Shy and broken and completely uninterested in telling what to do. She got into a diet where she had no business exposure. She destroyed toilet paper for sports. She walks into a room she should not be in and looks at you like you are in the wrong place. Diana constantly corrected her. Zibby completely ignored her every once in a while, with no obvious flaws.
I got to know Zibby the way you know your neighbor’s dog – piece by piece over time. Diana and I live in the same subdivision and we will run together as we walk. There was Zibby, nose down, pulling towards the smell of something that caught her attention, floping ears, completely absorbed in her own agenda. She has a way of making you smile without trying.
My daughter and I took care of her a few times when Diana and her husband took a day trip to a neighboring town to visit Nicole in college. We are going to fill her plate, bring her back, keep her company for a while. A little satisfaction. The kind you do not think twice. At the time, I did not know how much I was thinking about that afternoon.
When Diana’s family moved to the United States, Zibby came with them and accepted it immediately, as she always knew this was where they would end up. She is getting older. Slightly slower. Still stubborn. Still looking for you when she wants something in the middle of what you are doing.
You do not think you will miss the little things. Nails on the floor. The way she grows herself next to you. Her special chaos is just around the corner. And then the house is quiet and you understand that is the whole thing.
When the pile loss
Diana lost her father about a year before Zibby died.
The two losses are completely different. And sadness does not leave anything clean. It just gathers. One loss clings to another, and suddenly you are holding on to more than you ever knew, more than you ever had to anyone.
Zibby was a winner until that year. Walking must take place. Raising, visiting the vet, the daily business of caring for dogs that need you. Such habits are often underestimated when you are suffering. It makes you wake up. It takes you out. It keeps the day from collapsing in itself. And then Zibby lost, and everything went with her.
We walked together one morning shortly after. Our subdivisions are quiet, the air is still cool, that particular calm before the day of others begins. We talked for a while, then we did not.
She stopped walking.
Her eyes were full.
“People we love are gone,” she said. “We feel sad. But what can we do? Life goes on. That is the nature of life.”
She did not delete it. She did not pretend to be okay. She says it the way you say it, you say it many times and it goes smoothly. Like a rock you hold long enough that it no longer has sharp edges.
I did not say much. Nothing to add.
What I already know
I lost my father a few years ago.
I am not a person who breaks up visually or says difficult things. But I think about him every day. True every day. Sometimes it is a memory. Sometimes it is just a feeling. Many times it was a phrase I heard myself say and then acknowledge belonged to him as something I had absorbed for over fifty years without realizing it was happening.
That is what happens when grief strikes you unprotected. It really does not end. It was quieter. It stops being the only thing in the room and starts to be something you carry in your pocket. You forget that it was there sometimes. And then the little things happen, the dog-smelling song walks in the morning, and it happens again.
By the time you are 50, you know that losses do not come by accident. It accumulates. A parent. A friend. A pet. Some versions of your life that you can not say goodbye properly. You stop waiting to feel ready because the preparation has not yet appeared. You just keep going and at some point you notice that you have managed it all without anyone giving you credit for it.
Most people do not know what the people walking next to them are doing quietly.
The way things go back
Life settled after Zibby gradually and without any announcement.
Nicole graduates and returns home to find work nearby. The house was too quiet for people to come in again. Diana’s husband has retired. They both fall into the small rhythms of everyday life, cooking, arranging unremarkable objects that turn into the substance of things. It has nothing to do with dogs. And somehow it is all connected.
Grief does not go away. What it does is change. It starts to feel less like absent and like present. You go out for a morning walk and someone’s dog comes by and in just a second Zibby’s nose is completely gone in her world. It still catches you. But it also means something. Love does not fade when someone does. It just changes the address.
When Diana talks about Zibby, now she is back in China, Thailand, years of building a life away from home, this little bear is in the middle of it all, no matter where they are. Missing her is not proof of what was lost. It is proof of something real. Something important enough to leave a mark.
What I know now
If you are in it now, grieving for people or animals, or a chapter of your life that closes without warning, this is what I learned by going through it.
Do not try to go the other way faster than you can.
Grief does not respond to pressure. It shows when it wants to in a photo on your phone in a habit that you do not know you will borrow on a normal Tuesday for no specific reason. You can not exceed it. You can also let it come.
Say the name. Tell a story.
This is not a lie. It’s just what love does when there is no clear place to go. Keeping things alive keeps people alive, at least in a way that still matters.
Pay attention to the small details, not the memory of the title.
Certain funny things. The way Zibby treats law is purely theoretical. The real way my dad laughs at something he finds really funny. Those little details are what make an absence feel like a living person. They remind you that it is real life, not just a loss.
Let the habit keep you together.
When you do not feel like doing anything, small things, walking, eating, the normal shape of a normal day will take you beyond expectations. Not because they fixed something. Because they maintain your function while you find your feet again.
And believe that life will return.
Different from it, yes. But not smaller. There is a place for sorrow and a place for good. It turns out to be true even when it does not feel distant.
What does not change
Diana’s WhatsApp photos remain the same.
Every message from her brings Zibby back for a second. Those ears. That face. That absolute rejection is nothing but herself. I’m glad the photos are still there. Time goes by, not only do the people and animals we love stick to what we say, as we speak loudly in small things, we move forward on our own without realizing it.
Grief begins with absence. Somewhere along the way, it becomes a form of how you hold.
We keep going because we do. Because life, as Diana said that quiet morning, in our neighborhood is still going on. And in leading everyone we love and lose, we become who we are without even realizing who we really are.
Are you still losing what the world has gone through too fast?
** Names have been changed to protect privacy.
