feeling low

I'm totally devastated. I haven't cried that much or feeling this low since my mother died. And even then I was sort of preparing myself for it and trying to get used to that. Also I saw her dead as a sort of liberation for my mother after suffering so much with dementia. I thought that as her mind sort of died before and her body was just lingering on. So I grieved for her for a long time before she actually died.
In this case I was totally unprepared as this lovely little dog was so full of live and so young. He was just starting to lift his leg for peeing, for goodness sake!

Today I took the day off work and I never do that but I don't think I can face talking to people, not now not ever. I didn't cancel tomorrow classes but I'm a wreck right now and truly don't know how I'm going to be able to face people tomorrow. When I was working in the library it was ok if I had a bad day (and I did quite a few) because I could sort of hide myself and tidy up the shelves when the low ride arrived. Now I'm a teacher and there's no escape as I'm totally swamp and overwhelmed by this, red-eyed and puffy-faced etc.

The house is so empty and silent. Darwin was always following me around checking everything or just lying behind me when I was working in the computer. If I was feeling lonely before now I reached new lows.

This is like a catalyst for many things that I was bottleing down and all the tears that I couldn't cry for my mum and those that I didn't cry since I started feeling low are flooding out and it's scary the deep of the sorrow. At times it seems that there's no way up. This is a heavy knock as I was trying to get some sort of balance and I'm feeling really down now.

Of course the guys are devastated too. "The husband" started crying the moment I told him. Patxi at first was in shock, I think he couldn't quite believe it, but he burst into tears the moment he saw Darwin at the vets, just lying there, intact but with loads of blood around his head. I took him there because I though it was important that we all say goodbye to this precious little being that brought us so much fun and love.
Now we're all crying and feeling miserable.

We're having a very interesting discussions with Patxi about dead, as this is the first time he actually experiment it close enough. As we're non-believers, we don't even have the consolations that faith provides, but we do think that someday, when we die we join him somehow.

We asked for Darwin to be cremated with other dogs, as he loved to be around his kind. But I do think that we need to do something to mark his passing away, a sort of ceremony meaning the closing of a chapter but I don't know what.
It's amazing how close you get to this little beings that became part of the family in their own right. I cannot start to imagine how people survive the dead of a child.

Thanks for all the words of support in this blog and in my personal mailbox. Thank for understanding that this is a big and unexpected loss and that we're sad. And, above all, thanks for sharing; even if you're not physically with us your kind feelings touch us a lot.