The vet’s words hung in the air like smoke after a fire – present, suffocating, impossible to clear away. It’s time. Two simple words that shattered the careful wall I’d built around the inevitable truth I’d been avoiding for weeks.
I wasn’t ready then. The shock of hearing those words, even though I’d seen the signs, even though I’d known this day would come, hit me like ice water. My hands shook as I signed the papers, my voice cracked when I whispered their name one last time. Nothing about that sterile room or that final moment felt like enough preparation for losing my best friend.
But here’s what I’ve learned in the months since: I’m still not ready now.
The Myth of Being Ready
We tell ourselves stories about readiness when it comes to loss. We think that if we see it coming, if we have time to prepare, if we’ve lived through it before, somehow we’ll be equipped to handle it better. We imagine there’s a point where we can steel ourselves, where we can build enough emotional calluses to withstand the impact.
The truth is more complicated and more human than that.
Love doesn’t operate on a schedule of readiness. The bond we share with our pets – that pure, uncomplicated connection – doesn’t come with an expiration date that our hearts can accept, even when our minds understand the reality. They become so woven into the fabric of our daily lives that their absence doesn’t just leave a hole; it unravels entire sections of who we are.
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The Persistence of Not Being Ready
Months later, I still reach for the leash that no longer needs to hang by the door. I still save the last bite of sandwich, forgetting there’s no eager face waiting for scraps. I still listen for the jingle of tags or the soft padding of paws on hardwood floors.
Each of these moments is a small reminder: I’m still not ready.
And that’s not a failure. It’s not a sign that I haven’t processed my grief properly or that I need to move on faster. It’s simply evidence of how deep love runs and how thoroughly another soul can become part of ours.
What Not Being Ready Really Means
Not being ready doesn’t mean we’re stuck or broken. It means we loved fully. It means that this creature, this being who asked for nothing more than food, shelter, and affection, managed to become so essential to our existence that their absence feels impossible to accept.
Not being ready means that the relationship was real, significant, life-changing. It means that in a world full of temporary connections and surface-level interactions, we found something authentic and pure.
Learning to Live with Unreadiness
The question isn’t how to become ready for this loss – it’s how to carry the unreadiness with grace. How do we honor both our love and our grief without being paralyzed by either?
We learn to hold both truths simultaneously: we weren’t ready then, we’re not ready now, and that’s exactly as it should be. The magnitude of our unreadiness is proportional to the magnitude of our love.
We learn that grief isn’t a problem to be solved but a testament to be carried. We learn that missing them isn’t a weakness but a strength – proof that we’re capable of loving beyond ourselves, beyond logic, beyond the boundaries of species and lifespan.
Moving Forward While Looking Back
Some days are harder than others. Some days the unreadiness feels like a weight that makes it difficult to breathe. Other days, it feels more like a warm blanket – a reminder of how lucky we were to have had that love at all.
We learn to make space for both kinds of days.
We learn that healing doesn’t mean becoming ready for their absence. It means becoming capable of carrying their memory without being crushed by it. It means finding ways to honor what they gave us while still being open to what life might offer next.
The Continuing Story
I wasn’t ready then because love had made them feel permanent in a world where nothing is. I’m still not ready now because love doesn’t operate on timelines or logic or the neat progression of grief stages that well-meaning people try to map out for us.
Maybe readiness was never the point. Maybe the point was simply to love fully while we could, to be present for every ordinary moment that felt infinite, and to carry that love forward even when – especially when – we’re not ready to do so.
They deserved our unreadiness. They earned it through years of unconditional devotion, through greeting us at the door like we were the most important thing in their universe, through sleeping beside us and walking beside us and simply being beside us in all the ways that mattered.
So I’ll carry this unreadiness like a badge of honor, like proof that some connections transcend preparation and logic and the tidy categories we use to make sense of loss. I’ll carry it because it’s all I have left of the certainty that once, for a perfect stretch of time, we were each other’s everything.
And maybe that’s enough.
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