I am processing a lot this month. I've been processing a lot this last year, really. I knew this week was coming, was prepared to give myself space and grace for the grief I knew would hit me and yet still somehow I am blindsided by its severity. Perhaps because it's compounded by everything else I'm carrying lately, but I think it would have taken me out regardless. I'm hanging by a thread to function throughout the day, especially this week as May 31st looms ahead.
One year ago today was Run thrus at CPE Agility Nationals. Poppy and I had worked hard to achieve this goal AND it was in my home state, it was a perfect opportunity to see the people I loved and experience an event of this magnitude for the first time. Jojen was still alive one year ago today, although he had some GI issues, we were hopefully the meds would start working.
Tomorrow marks one year of my very first day of competition and Jojen spent the entire day in the ER with my husband. Thankfully my mom came so I wasn't alone that first day but it was still riddled with balancing worry over Jojen and focusing on joy with Poppy playing a sport we loved.
Weather wrecked the next days competition schedule, outdoor rings flooded and all runs got moved inside to two rings, then Jojen died, in the ER, without me. We left that night without finishing our Nationals experience.
Losing Jojen would have wrecked me, no doubt, but the way I lost him, the way he died, is not something I can ever get over. I knew I wouldn't have him forever, his heart murmur was slowly progressing, even on meds. He had developed some neurological symptoms we were still assessing. That was precisely why I brought him north with me. I knew it would be the last time the people that knew and loved him, and knew and loved me, would be able to see him, I just didn't know I would be leaving without him.
A dog like Jojen, so pure in hear and spirit, who never had an unkind thought in his head, who lived to love people and any other thing he came across, deserved to go in the most peaceful and loving way. He deserved to be held by me, looking at me with his big brown eyes, trying to convey all the love he had for me as he quietly passed away. I deserved that too. I can't get out of my head that he was in a strange vet clinic, surrounded by strangers, kind, but still strangers, and died in a cage. They tried to resuscitate him, but it was instantaneous. I know logically that could have happened here with me too, but even that would have been better than this. He deserved to be held and loved as he passed, not to drop on a cold metal cage floor. That's the part I will never reconcile and will always take me out.
I've said it so many times before, as have those that loved him, to know Jojen even for a minute was to fall in love with him. He was the happiest, most gentle hearted, loving dog I will likely ever come across. I would like to think he'll come back to me someday and I'll have a second chance but I know souls that pure are rare.
How incredibly lucky have I been to have had two such souls grace my life. Cosmo and Jojen were the same, in different bodies. Both wove themselves into the fabric of my being and their losses have gutted me. I hope Beanie has taken them both in and is protecting their gentle spirits, as he did in life, and will keep them safe and together until I can be with them all again. The only thing that gives me solace is looking back over photos of Jojen's life and seeing how incredibly full it was. How many adventures he went on, how many people he got to smother with kisses and all the animals he got to help raise and love. It was a good life for a dog that deserved only the best. I just wish the end could have been worthy of him. I know he's not holding a grudge about it though and maybe, just maybe, he did it for me. Maybe he knew it would be so much worse for me to see him drop like that. I can't know and it's selfish to think, but if any dog would do that for a human, it would be him.
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