On Pet Loss: How Writing Helped Me Process Grief and Preserve Memories: Let's just say, there was a lot to work through.

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I’ve been an on-and-off journaler since my sophomore year of college (2001), when my best friend brought me back a buttery soft leather journal from her semester abroad in Florence. The truth is, I leaned on journaling during the heavier times of my life, and sixteen years later, in December 2017, things were going remarkably well. I was recently divorced from a man who was never meant to be my husband, remarried to the man who was, and living in a house with the yard I had always wanted for Tovi. Needless to say, the journals of my life sat collecting dust on a bookshelf. 

The onset of Tovi’s illness was sudden and unexpected, and I was thrust into a season of my life I wasn’t ready for. Tovi was my once-in-a-lifetime love, my soul mate in the form of a dog, and the thought of losing him sent me into an emotional spiral. In my desperation to both ground myself and feel some semblance of connection during our separation while he resided in the Pet ER, I reconected with the familiar comfort of pen on paper. 

In a bed that missed his presence, I journaled about all of the things exceeding the speed limit in my head. Between the pages, I wrote him letters, which I delivered during visiting hours and placed in a plastic bag hanging from his kennel door. As an afterthought, I threw in some of the rocks we had collected on our many hikes over the years — as if they would serve as some sort of talisman to bring him back to health.

In the letters, I told him how deeply I loved him, I reminded him of all the good times we shared, and what I hoped for our future. I begged him to survive. I promised him I would finally work through “X,” if he would only pull through. I told him I had no idea how to do life without him. I apologized for every perceived mistake I made along the way, like not always giving him sufficient time to sniff, and the time I didn’t know better and hired a dog trainer who used a prong collar that made him screech. All of the things we want to release at the end. 

And yet, my bargaining wasn’t powerful enough to change destiny. After he was physically gone, seven weeks passed before I could write again, and not from lack of trying. I wanted so badly to feel the connection to him that only writing gave me, but my body could not tolerate remembering. Every time I opened my laptop or picked up my journal, I was paralyzed by a wave of emotions. The loss was too raw. The tears wouldn’t stop falling. The mere thought of remembering broke me.

My body was literally rejecting the one thing that had always brought me comfort. I now know that our bodies have a way of protecting us (thank you, body), and I was flooding myself with memories that my body didn’t yet know how to process. My efforts were as counterproductive as starting physical therapy before giving a broken bone the chance to stabilize. I knew one day I would be able to go there, but it wasn’t then. So, I surrendered to where I was and found solace in subtle, less-direct ways of remembering.

In my melancholy state, I scrapbooked photos and trinkets from our time together. I took solitary walks while listening to our familiar “walking” playlist. There was something beautiful about a tearful walk through the frigid winter air, replaying memories to the soundtrack of our lives, and imagining he was walking beside me. This brand of tears felt more like a gentle cleansing and less like my heart being ripped out of my body.

Eventually, I opened a Microsoft Word document, saved it as “Tovi’s Story,” and would work on it to varying degrees over the next seven years. At first, I could only tolerate writing for brief periods. I took a lot of breaks. Sometimes for days. Sometimes for weeks. Sometimes, even months. While I heeded my body’s guidance, I never gave up trying to write in some capacity. I felt this burning need to preserve every moment of our time together, to have tangible proof that this extraordinary time in my life really happened.

As time passed and the wound wasn't as raw, remembering became less emotionally charged. I found myself excited to write, eager to revisit the chapters of our lives. Don’t get me wrong, while it felt safer — less bitter and more sweet — it was never not hard.

As I wrote, I realized I was mourning not only Tovi, but an entire era of my life that he witnessed. His body held every version of me. He represented people I loved and lost, and times in my life that were long gone. Writing felt like getting into an elevator, going down, and peering in on a time when I was someone completely different. Parts of our story became memoir-ish.

And that's when I stopped writing for me. 

This “extra” part of myself, which I do my best to keep at bay, emerged from dormancy. I wanted the world to see how much I loved. To see how much I hurt. To see how broken I was. To know every trauma, recovery, and joy that transpired over those twelve years. I imagined my words becoming a bestselling book about a girl and her dog who shared an extraordinary bond. I became laser-focused on editing and revisions. I got stuck on certain phases of our life, and it wasn’t until those words were perfected that I would move on to the next. But the more time that passed, the harder it became to remember, and there were times in our lives that never got chronicled.

The pressure I put on myself to write had stolen the joy it once brought. It took me a long time to understand my words were never meant to be baked to perfection for public consumption. My words were meant for me. Seven years later, on the advice of a therapist, I laid “Tovi’s Story” to rest in its unfinished, unresolved, unedited state and sealed it with the words, “The End.” And even though it felt that way, by then I was humbled to be in the presence of others who grieved just as deeply, and I recognized I was far from the only girl and her dog who shared an extraordinary bond. I didn’t need to scream my story to the world for it to have mattered. We all have a story that matters.

What mattered was that I knew it. That I lived it. While I will never regret what I wrote, sometimes I wish I had done something as simple as keeping a loose journal devoted to snapshots of our lives — words scribbled so only I could decipher them, unedited, tear stained memories, out of order… yet complete. 

As for the grieving process, for years, I wore my tears like a badge of honor. I thought that if I stopped crying, it meant something about our relationship, and I wasn’t ready to let go of the only connection I had left. Writing served the same purpose. But somewhere along the way, I lost that insatiable need to excavate the memories and relive them daily. There was never a conscious hard stop — it was more like a gradual awareness that he was no longer at the forefront of my mind. These breaks were different from the ones I took when it hurt too much to remember. Months would pass before I noticed the document had a “last opened” timestamp of eight months earlier. If I overthought it, I felt guilty for abandoning that connection to him, but mostly I felt content.

Maybe it was out of sheer exhaustion. Maybe I finally surrendered to the fact that no matter how much I tantrumed like a 2-year-old, there was no going back. I didn’t have to like my After, but I had to lean into it and let go of my preoccupation with looking back on a life that no longer existed. At the risk of sounding cliché, it’s what he would have wanted. After all the growth he’s witnessed in me, he would have hated to see me blowing up my life. This, I know.

Moving forward wasn’t the betrayal I once thought it would be. Our connection will always be present, but it isn’t as emotionally charged. While there is something heartbreaking about losing that intensity, the distance is for the best. Even if it wouldn’t be as extraordinary a time, my body needed that space for the rest of what life had in store for me.

These days, I don’t write about Tovi much anymore. I haven’t opened that Microsoft document titled “Tovi’s Story” in over a year (it’s actually been renamed “Tovi’s TAIL”). That dreaded “extra” part of me would have wanted you to know that, at last count, it is 48 double-spaced pages long, typed in Times New Roman, size 12. But I gently remind myself these pages are for me, and that love cannot be measured that way. Or at all.

In fact, among all of the pages of our life, I’m most taken with the two-page “Intro” because it captures what it felt like to be in our relationship. And re-reading that feels more meaningful than revisiting any of the fancy milestones we shared. With Tovi’s presence in my life, I felt whole. I felt complete. I felt safe. I felt so much love. I felt a constant sense of both joy and disbelief that he was mine. The feelings he evoked in me were more valuable than perfecting the details of a scene.

And yet, I remain grateful that I had the foresight to document the moments that would have inevitably faded with the passage of time. When I’m missing that season of my life, these pages are the closest thing I have to getting in a time machine and visiting ghosts of my past. I thank my younger self for this extraordinary gift. In the thick of my grief, I never would have thought this possible, but today, revisiting that season of life fills me with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and joy for having happened. And then I can close it and move on.

I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t still a certain level of pain that comes with remembering, but that‘s a healthy reaction to missing someone you love. 

A note on Telling Your TAIL:

This was my experience of writing “Tovi’s” TAIL. I specify “Tovi’s TAIL” because my experience of writing my subsequent dog was an entirely different experience.

Don’t judge your grief experience against anyone else’s — and that includes your own. Every time we fall in love, it’s a different experience, and that is reflected in how we grieve. Tovi was present during a certain time in my life, and that added a certain intensity to our bond. While I loved the dog that came after him, I was never “in love” with her. When she died, I once again found comfort in my words. But this time, I started writing immediately. There was no broken bone to heal before the healing exercises could begin. And while, for me, writing was necessary in my grief journey, I never felt that pull to keep returning to it or that insatiable need to preserve every moment of our time together.

In a few pages, I captured the essence of our relationship, and I treasure that beautiful memorial I’m left with. I wrote differently because I loved differently.

As always, my writing is based on my own opinions and experiences and should not be taken as fact or considered professional advice.

For more insight on Pet Love and Loss, and to find journaling prompts, please visit my website, Pet Therapy Notes.

Written by Elizabeth Weiner