Even when he is gone, love always remains

That is why I am writing this, so that I would notice the details that make me sad, so that it would help me understand where change is inevitable, and simply dissolve the pain. Pain is an interesting feeling, it really does dissolve. The regret and the sorrow about the one who left do remain, but the pain gives way at some point, and the more honestly you look it in the eye, the sooner.

Telling others has been the hardest, because it immediately brings a scratching in the throat and makes the eyes shine with tears. And so that is exactly what I have to do, so that moving on can happen. I cannot stay silent and pretend that nothing has happened.

Showing your vulnerability, though, is frightening. Especially when the other person has no good contact with their own vulnerability, because then they go into rationality and no understanding of grief takes place, and the grieving one is left alone with their sorrow. This happens often in everyday life too, where someone’s waves of emotion are not noticed, or there is a wish to silence them with rationalising, which in no way supports the lesson that the rising of the emotion has created.

To allow emotions to be felt is the greatest gift we can give ourselves and others. There is no need to fear them.

Chiki was the bravest soul I have ever met.

Fortunately his soul is still here, because I feel him curled up asleep at my side or counting my steps behind me, even if in truth he had not done that for a long time. That comforts me, at least for now. For the same reason those who stay behind often keep the souls of the departed close and do not let them go. Sometimes for years or decades. Knowing this, a feeling sometimes arises that it would be more right to let him go, but at the same time something in me still needs his presence. The long years we spent together help me hold on to those memories for a long time yet. The bridge to a new world, one in which his physical body is not, and to a new self who no longer has that loyal and beloved friend who was always, unconditionally there, still has to be built.

And then….and then it was still I who had to decide and help him leave that body. His will to live was greater than his physical body could bear any longer. If the departures of people close to me have been hard, they at least chose that moment themselves. But Chiki had been on that border for a year already. I cannot count the times when it seemed that now, this weakness after a seizure is his last breath and he will choose the path of leaving himself. But again and again he came back. The list of what no longer functioned in his body was longer than the list of what worked, but more important than any of it was the will. Will and a fighter’s soul were in him to the end. His loyalty in staying by my side kept him in this bodily world, even though he had in fact been somewhere between the two worlds for a long time.

Making such a decision is hard, because although the guiding thought is that the right time is when they are suffering, that is difficult to pin down in real life. It is not so clear when that suffering truly begins and what counts as it. Old age comes day by day, adapting to the changes is almost imperceptible, you no longer remember when it was that he last barked or ran about. Only through the photographs taken is it possible to identify the timescale that gets lost while living in the moment.