I’ve always struggled with the finality of death. I don’t think I have ever fully come to terms with it or grasped it. I’ve experienced the loss of friends and even a parent before. Now with Peppa being gone, I find myself once again wrestling with the finality of this thing. Other times, I could kind of just carry on, keep busy, and sort of forget. In this case, the loss is so profound and close to home that it can’t be avoided. It is felt in the depths of my soul right to my core.

My dog was so close to me and so embedded in my life that this loss has forced me to face death and the loss head on. I’m not any wiser or more knowledgeable about death. But I am merely more broken by it. That’s what this experience has taught me. Grief doesn’t make you smarter about loss. It just makes you feel it more acutely, more deeply, more persistently than you ever thought possible.

I catch myself looking for Peppa in the spaces she used to occupy. The quiet moments hit different now. There’s an absence where there was once presence, and I’m learning that absence can be just as powerful as what was there before. It’s not something you get over. It’s something you carry with you everyday for the rest of your life.

I miss my dog.