Pet Loss and The Anniversary Effect

Tuesday, June 17, marked 6 months since we lost Lilly. It’s a rough week for other reasons as well. Another dog writer friend of mine calls it “The Anniversary Effect.”

Why so hard? Well, this week includes these watershed moments:

6-month anniversary of losing Lilly 

1-year anniversary of losing my mom

Official sale of Tom’s childhood home (just over 2 years since we lost his mom)

That’s a lot to absorb on top of the day-to-day grief that remains worse than you probably can imagine.

Still, all of us here are hanging in there:

Roxanne News: I’m starting to take on more work again, after a self-imposed lite period. I’m also walking / hiking most days and sitting outside while I eat my lunch and read. (After 5 years of not really being able to concentrate enough to read whole books, I can suddenly read again. Not heavy stuff, but at least I’m reading.)

Book News: I’m more than 17,000 words into writing the first book based on Lilly’s life. I still need to add ideas all of you have offered for dealing with grief into several sections, and I still need to research and write the appendixes, but I’m making steady progress.

Tom News: Tom will be relieved not to be taking care of TWO houses anymore. While it’s a big transition not to have his childhood home in his life, he is excited to see a new family (with 2 young kids and a young boxer) take it into the future. Tom took care of his mom every day for the last 2 1/2 years of her life, and he has been busy settling her estate since May 2012. It’ll be good for him to get back to HIS life again. (I’ll be glad to have him home … now, if I can just get him to RELAX!)

Ginko News: Ginko is mostly steady, but we are seeing signs that his neurological and senility issues are progressing. There’s the senile barking, of course. Waking up early (like 4:30 am) and barking until BOTH Tom and I get up for the day. And, barking in the late afternoon, until Tom comes home. Ginko is also having more frequent poop accidents, like he just doesn’t realize he needs to go, until it’s too late. He sees our regular veterinarian every 3 months now. He is due to see her again in July. BUT, he is happy and engaged. He turned 14 on May 13. That’s pretty old for a big dog, so he does sleep a lot, but he is very happy to see us … and he even likes to play a little and poke around outside.

So, the answer to the big question — How are you? is that we’re still grieving heavily, but we continue to function the best we can in real life.

I’m still trying to figure out the future of the blog. I’m considering posting just once a week for a while — a mixture of dog book reviews, updates about our lives, commenting on dog news, and discussing / debating hot topics.

We’ll see. I take it day by day, minute by minute.

Thanks, as always, for your interest and concern.