For Sage

Also, a letter from a friend.

Today was always going to be a hard day. That’s a foregone conclusion. It marks the two-year anniversary of our dog Sage’s death. Kellie and I had been dreading today for months, and had made plans to spend a quiet day remembering her and just being together in our feelings. Unfortunately, now I have to manage both my Sage feelings and my Kellie feelings, which feels incredibly unfair. Add it to the list.

If you’ve texted or dropped something off or sent me happy thoughts today, thank you. Any distractions, today especially, are very welcome.

Sage was an incredible member of our family. Kellie and I could never decide fully about adopting children. We went through the foster parent training classes back in 2007, but ended up opting for grad school instead of a foster kid, which was probably the right call for us. We started talking about getting a dog around the same time, and eventually, after we got brave enough, we reached out to a few different rescues. Some of you might have heard this story, and that’s okay. We fell in love with a schnauzer named Mudd first. Mudd was terrified of glow in the dark objects, they said, and we really wanted to adopt him. So we submitted all the stuff and the rescue said we lost him to another family who moved more quickly. Then we fell in love with a shih tzu and went through the process again, and lost her too. Sage was try three.

Sage was a purebred Havanese, and she was being used as a breeder for an Amish puppy mill in Holmes County. When the mills get tired of a particular dog, they either kill them or drop them off at a vet to dispose of. That happened to Sage, and a Havanese-specific rescue named HALO snatched her up. We applied to adopt her the same day we saw her listing online, and then had an interview, along with two references also being interviewed on our behalf. (To Laura and Donna, if you’re reading this, you have our eternal thanks for vouching for our ability to parent Sage well.)

We had no earthly idea how to be dog parents. Sage had experienced a lot of trauma in her previous life, and nobody had any way to know how old she was. The rescue said she was afraid of men, especially men with beards, so they had misgivings about letting us adopt her based purely on that. But we loved her and wanted to give it a shot even if my beard was a major sticking point.

When we met her at the foster home, there were a whole bunch of dogs there. And they all wanted to meet Kellie and I. It felt like an endless parade of dogs racing up to us, but none of them were Sage. We eventually found her loitering around another room, avoiding us, anxious about who we might be. And she was beautiful and she was perfect in every way. Of course we brought her home.

And Sage was so, so hard. She immediately developed an intense love for both Kellie and I (but especially me, despite my beard). She had huge separation anxiety. She didn’t want to walk on a leash. She got sick no matter what food we ate her. She wasn’t a puppy, but graduated from puppy obedience class because she was so behind in her socialization skills (we were so proud of her). And she quickly became one of the most important part of our life together.

Sage kept Kellie company when I was gone a lot for grad school. Kellie’s grandma babysat her every day when Kellie started her own program. And those two developed a really strong bond as well.

After all the years we spent with Sage, we finally developed a sense of peace about the idea that we could keep someone else alive instead of just ourselves, we were responsible enough to remember that she needed food and water and treats and love even in the midst of our own stuff. She gave us so many gifts, and we felt like she was going to be in our lives forever.

When she finally died, we did everything we possibly could, and her body just gave out. She had been in our lives for thirteen and a half years, and it wasn’t long enough. That loss was the hardest thing I’ve ever made it through in my life. When I tell people that, I think they humor me. But they don’t realize that I’m being 100% serious. Sage was every bit as much our child that she would have been if she were human. If we adopted a human child who died after thirteen years in our life, that grief would be considered normal for us. But for a dog, some people will always minimize that loss, and that sucks.

I’m not counting Kellie’s death as the hardest thing I’ve ever made it through because I haven’t yet made it through this, and I’m not even sure what “making it through” looks like with this.

Grief is weighing very, very heavily on me today. And the best way to try and breathe in spite of that has been to talk to other people, so I’m talking.

• I slept for more than seven hours last time, for the first time in a long time.

• Two separate friends stopped in at two separate times this morning, and both of them happened to be here just as photos of them and Kellie and I popped up on our living room photo frame. The odds of that happening (with thousands and thousands of pictures on that thing) are very low, but it happened.

• I woke up twice last night to the sounds of Kellie sleeping in bed next to me. I don’t care whether it was in my head or whether I was dreaming about her or whether she’s haunting me, no matter what the logical explanation may be, it gave me such a huge smile of relief each time. What a gift.

• Speaking of gifts, my grading is completely done for the semester, thanks to some incredible friends/BSW faculty members who cleaned up my messes and made it happen. I’m forever grateful to all of you for helping.

• I spoke about this with a friend for the first time yesterday, and she said she’s mailing me two books that helped her survive similar losses in her life. I can’t wait to read them.

• It was very quiet in my house last night, and I gave up by 11:30 or so and headed to bed. Didn’t spill a glass of water all over the place, so my sleep was significantly drier than the night before (which is a plus).

• Kellie’s death certificates were delivered to my house today. What a weird sentence to type, even after almost two weeks of telling hundreds of people that she’s gone. They’re not something I like to look at, even though they’re a reality.

• My first counseling sessions are happening on Wednesday. I just couldn’t do it today.

• I’ve been looking all over my house for clean underwear for myself for the past week, and finally told my dad today (I was getting desperate). Turns out they’ve all been folded and sitting in a tub in the guest bedroom for a week now. Mystery solved! One of the downsides to having people who love you do your laundry is that they don’t know what you need unless you tell them. Mental note: tell them more often.

• Someone brought me matcha, and someone else brought me frozen Costco pizza and cheesy snacks. Both are incredible gifts, and I was very grateful to receive them.

• I spent a significant portion of my afternoon and evening pretty down and depressed. Thanks to everyone who did their best to try and help me self-regulate through the pain.

• The truth is, it’s a lot easier for me to retain anger and hold grudges at folks who do mean things and aren’t sorry in the slightest than it should be. I am consciously trying to spend less of my life hurt at the people who are not present and more of my life focusing on loving people who ARE present. That’s the trick. Thanks for helping me through this journey, as it’s just one journey of many I appear to be taking (almost entirely against my will).

I’ve also been inspired to publish something a dear friend of Kellie’s sent me this morning. I don’t want to have all the “public grieving” fun, so if you have a note or letter or thought you would like me to put in this newsletter for more folks to see, please send it to me anytime.

I’ll publish them anonymously (if I don’t hate them) and we can all relish the fact that grief is raw and real and something that happens both publicly and privately.

Oh, and if you have an issue with swearing, get over it. You’ll be okay. Kellie loved swearing, so it’s a very fitting tribute. Deal with it.

Here’s the first of what I hope is eventually a series (seriously, send them to me):

Letters From Kellie’s Friends, Part 1 (No, I Didn’t Write This)

Dear Kellie,

1. You’re a cunt. You didn’t really need to die yet. You suck. If you already forgot, the plan was for me to go first since you were always the better human being.

2. Also, I feel like your memorial around Memorial Day isn’t really you but I guess I’ll go.

Now that that’s out of the way, you ought to know that you were one of my first REAL friends and one of my first best friends. We were such good friends that I can’t even find any photos; they’re all cemented in my memory. You never saw me as different or weird and you’ll never know how much that means to me. Because we both knew how weird and different I was. And let’s be honest, you were a fucking weirdo too. But we never judged each other; only the assholes with whom we went to junior high and high school…but I mean, we were kinda the best people there right? I will never forget all the nights we spent together where your mom made her homemade pizza and we watched some dumb fucking shows, but I would never tell you how fucking dumb they were…i was just happy to spend time with a best friend in a nonjudgmental space. Anyway, i will never forget you, Kellie. You will always be one of my first best of the best friends. I love you and will always miss you.

That gave me so much joy to read when I woke up this morning, and I hope you got the same joy from it as well. Send me letters to Kellie, and I promise I won’t edit them in the slightest before putting them up here!

I reserve the right to not publish something that’s bullshit, though. Fair warning.

So as I try to continue stumbling through the double-barrel devastation of thinking about my sorrow surrounding both Sage and Kellie today, please send me all the positive vibes you have. I could use them.

Hugs,

Matt