November Ninth

Five years ago, I died...

No, worse. You died, and I was left behind. Stuck in a world where you no longer exist. How do you form the words for this feeling? I’ve struggled for five years and still don’t know.

It’s a hole. The empty black void where you once lived. The light in your eyes. The warmth of your body. The love you gave to me.

Now, she is grief. A wave pulling me under. Fingers clawing at my chest, threatening the breath from my lungs and the blood from my heart.

But it’s still so much MORE.

I thought I’d die without you. The pain is so much worse than anything I’ve ever experienced. It was so bad; I felt my brain couldn’t comprehend. I felt the walls go down. The dissociation.

I could no longer feel the pain. But I couldn’t feel anything.

And then it would hit me. Like a train. All the pain would come rushing back and it would feel like I was being ripped apart from the inside out. I couldn’t breathe, but I wanted to scream.

I expected to cry blood. I cried so much. And it still wasn’t enough.

I thought time would heal, but I still feel that awful pain sometimes. So fresh, like you just died yesterday.

I can still recall that day. Etched into my memory like a scar. I relive it often. No matter how hard my brain tries to forget. To protect me.

No matter how much I try to hold tight to the good. The loving memories becoming blurry with time. Yet that day staying as fresh as the day it happened all that time ago.

The day was November Ninth, Twenty-Nineteen. It was a Saturday. I woke up early for work. Percy laying at my feet. I gave her the usual love before I began getting ready. Let her out to potty and then she slipped off to go sleep with my parents. When I had finished, I had a little extra time before I had to leave, so I went in search of her. To give her some extra love before I left. When I found she had gone to sleep with my parents, I hesitated. I didn’t want to disturb them on their day off and I thought, “I’ll just give her love tonight” as it was my Friday, and I’d have the entire weekend with her.

Little did I know how wrong I was. It remains one of my biggest regrets to this day.

She died around nine in the morning. I got home around ten. Not knowing what was going on. The thought only briefly crossed my mind, but I thought she was “too young” and “so healthy.”

The rest of the day, I was on autopilot. We took her to Columbus for a necropsy. I watched them roll my best friend away in a body bag.

Thirteen months old. I knew her for eleven of them. She was more than just my best friend. She was my baby.

My everything just…gone. The soul that saved my life no longer existed. I had to live without the one I knew I couldn’t live without.

It was my worst fear, realized. I cried every day for months. I had so many questions. I was lost. Still kind of am, to be honest.

I didn’t get answers and I’ve been mad at the world ever since.

That’s what you don’t expect when you lose someone. The amount of anger. It’s so tremendous, it has its own gravity.

I lost a part of myself. Didn’t write for a very long time because I didn’t want to face my emotions. They were twisted and scary. I couldn’t face my new reality. I couldn’t accept that she was really gone.

Little by little, I’ve worked on it. Little by little, I started writing again. Now, I’m here. Still with a lot of trauma and a bunch of grief.

But I’m still pushing through. For Percy.