I was feeling so alone when my dog Jake passed away in June.

               

This has been a really hard couple of weeks. I’ve been missing my sweet dog Jake and it’s been hitting me really hard. In October I was a Speaker at the Metaphysical Chapel of Life      , the chapel I attend. Since it was right before Halloween I spoke about the difference between ghosts and spirits. I have a video that I may upload after I get it edited. I included a couple of examples and pictures of the occurrences that I experienced in my house with a couple of them with Jake.  As I had my dog Jake since he was 5 1/2 weeks old; he was a constant furry bundle at my feet. 

I have been beside myself with grief. Crying almost non-stop since it happened. Sunday, 6/24/18 was really hard for me. I miss him so much and only have his harness to hold onto. I made a bundle out of the big towel that I used to dry him off and keep him warm after we got out of the pool and sleep with that and the comforter that we took to the vet with us. Sunday night I went to bed, holding my bundle, clutching my comforter and crying over him. I couldn’t reign in the pain and kept crying so hard that I couldn’t breathe through my nose. I told myself that I had to calm down and tried to steady my breathing. I slowed my breathing down so far that I actually thought to myself, “wow how am I still alive after barely breathing?” It reminded me of when people die in the movies their breath gets very shallow and slow and then they just stop. I was at my lowest of lows and the grief was stifling. As I lay there and try to calm down I start talking to Jake. I tell him I love him, I miss him, and I wish he were there with me. I was confused as to why I hadn’t “seen” him yet as our connection was so close that I thought surely, he would come to me but so far, he hadn’t. Even though I made a notation about it on Friday, 6/23/18, thinking that I saw him twice but thought it was the other dogs at both times even though it wasn’t. As I lay there barely breathing, I went into a trance-like state. I was talking to Jake and I felt like he was talking back to me. As I was saying, I love you, I love you, I love you it echoed in my head. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. I then found myself saying “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay.” At two different times (one of them being 12:27 am when I said “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay) I felt pressure on my back like someone laid down behind me and gently pushed on my back. A short time after when I was saying “I miss you, I miss you, I miss you” I felt it again. I believe this was Jake. I felt an overwhelming happy, peaceful and joyful feeling wash over me. I felt like he was there with me, comforting me and consoling me. I “felt” him talk to me, communicate to me that he was there with me and it was going to be okay. I can’t express how happy I was. Ecstatic even. I felt like, maybe I could get through this life without him for the first time since he passed. I wanted to savor this moment. It was transcendent. I was so happy and thankful that he came to me and I felt his presence. All of this was very good. My soul felt lighter and for the first time in almost a week, I was finally “okay” with what happened, knowing that he was, in fact, okay. 

 Of course, I still miss him horribly. I got a memorial tattoo of his likeness on my thigh and am going to get another small tattoo on my wrist showing Mother and Son because that’s how I felt about him. He was more than “just a dog”. He was part of me. I worked from home and was with him almost every single day of his life. When we first got him, the owner of the company I worked for had passed away and the business closed. For months, I was with him 24 hours a day. We had another dog Duke which was the reason we got Jakey to begin with. We wanted a companion to Duke but since he was dog-aggressive we couldn’t bring in an adult dog; it had to be a puppy. Even though Duke terrorized him those first couple of months he grew to love Jake and, I believe, see him as son also.