We had to put down our beloved baby girl of 10 years this morning after abruptly finding out about an abdominal tumor that burst open and caused internal bleeding past the point of saving.
Could really use some advice on the grieving process, all I can do is stare at her stuff and feel nothing but despair.
(Advice at the bottom.)
I’m so sorry that you’ve lost your friend. When our baby girl (cat) passed away, we sobbed and sobbed. Losing a pet is sometimes harder than a family member because the pet is there EVERY MOMENT. Literally everything reminds you of them and how much you miss them.
But hang in there. The final form of “grief” is “appreciation” and having a friend that you feel that kind of appreciation towards is one of the deep joys of life.
We lost our girl in March and only just last week I saw a picture of her and shed a quiet tear thinking of her (this was after a couple of months of feeling really great and having “moved on”), but I was thankful that I could cry and knew that she still mattered to me. It’s hard, but also deeply beautiful to love so much.
Now for some advice: when we lost our girl, doing a “ritual” to honor her was really important for me. In the days after her passing, I stayed up late into the night going through every picture my SO and I had of her and found the ones I felt like captured our pet the most. Once I had those all together, I went online and made a picture book from Google Photos and ordered a printed copy to keep on the bookshelf.
The hours and hours of gathering photos really helped me to process the grief. Then, about a week after I ordered the book, it arrived in the post and I looked through it and cried some more.
Afterwards, I really felt like I had honored her memory and had cried about as much as I needed to.
Wishing you well on your journey, and thank you for making the hard choice to shorten her suffering as much as you could — that’s the burden that pet parents carry for our pets.
Blessings!