The Grieving Process

Something I’ve always known but haven’t become really apparent to me until now is that people grieve differently. Even though Richard and I both lost someone that we loved so much, we’ve handled our grief in different ways.

I, on the one hand, have a difficult time hiding my emotions and outwardly cry in public or at least try to fight the burning sting of tears. Maybe because I’m a woman or maybe because I’ve had Kobi since he was a puppy or maybe I’ve always been an emotional person. Richard, on the other hand, has been keeping his sorrow inside, trying to find the strength to be my rock, taking care of me when I couldn’t take care of myself. And when I’m not around, or he thinks I’m not, he’ll go off somewhere else in the house and mourn.

The month of March should have been a special month in our lives. In this month, Camren turned 13, I had another birthday and Richard and I celebrated one year of bliss. But also in this month, Kobi passed away.

I woke up on my birthday with tears in my eyes and difficulty getting out of bed. If you know me, then you know that I LOVE birthdays. But this year I wish it didn’t come so soon. There was an emptiness that was so difficult to describe. Richard was great by gathering the LIKHA peeps and surprising me for dinner. It was my first time out of my shell and it was a step I needed to make my way back into civilization. I couldn’t go through this without Richard and can’t even imagine doing it with anyone else.

But things have seemed to be getting worse rather than better for me. And I felt that Richard needed a place for himself to grieve as well since he didn’t want to burden me with his feelings of sadness.

So, we decided to go to a pet grieving group. In that short 1.5 hour session, I overcame some of the hardest feelings that I was struggling with…sadness that it all happened so fast and guilt that I wasn’t there when Kobi passed.

I expected myself to be open and talkative and Richard to be an observer. In fact the opposite was true. Richard just opened up about his feelings and we passed around the SJ Mercury article and this month’s issue of “Bark Magazine” that published a Kobi cancer-sniffing story. I jumped in intermittently but it was pretty much Richard’s show. And even when awkward silence took over the group, he did great by engaging the other members into participating. In fact, I think he did a better job than the facilitator of the group. At one point he even read a book that my friend Itza gave us: “Dog Heaven”.

Then we heard other people’s stories. Stories of a dog that would lie on the same spot for 9 hours because he couldn’t get up. Stories of how it took a woman and her husband all their strength to help their dog get up just to use the bathroom. Stories of how difficult it is to put their pet to sleep. And detailed stories of how a dog had convulsions on the bed with his mommy.

We were lucky. We were lucky that Kobi did not have to endure the suffering to the point of incapacitation. We were lucky that Kobi decided to pass away on his own terms. And we were lucky that we weren’t in the room when he passed away. I was having a difficult time shaking off the memories of him with the tubes in him and his legs shaking as he tried to stand. And I know if I saw him pass, those images would haunt me forever. I didn’t need to deal with all of that. I just needed to deal with the fact that it was his time to go and that it was all too soon for big baby Kobi.

I am happy that we made the decision to go because being around people that experience the same amount of grief and loss does wonders for the soul. From that day on, I felt like I was finally starting my healing process.