Loss Of Pet Quotes

Paul wasn’t too sure about a half nibbled peanut, quite some parting gift, he thought.

Later, when his father left him, the boy cried over his pet, until eventually his father sent a servant to take the body of the bird away and bury it. The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he'd learned: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.

In his grief over the loss of a dog, a little boy stands for the first time on tiptoe, peering into the rueful morrow of manhood. After this most inconsolable of sorrows there is nothing life can do to him that he will not be able somehow to bear.

Heaven is a place where all the dogs you've ever loved come to greet you.

I know why she cried like that. She cried because she wasn't finished grieving the loss of me. When someone has an exaggerated emotional reaction to something in the present, it's usually because they haven't resolved something in their past.

Love is love," I told her, as I tell all of my patients who are ashamed to find themselves shattered by the death of a dog. "Loss is loss.

All the love you ever gave is waiting for you there at Rainbow Bridge.

Some of us have deeper feelings for one over another. It can’t be helped. It’s chemistry. It’s inherent. You can’t make yourself love someone you don’t and you can’t make yourself stop loving someone you do.

You will never know loneliness when you have a dog, when you lose that dog it will be loneliness like you've never known.

He told me that soul mates come into our lives at very precise times to inspire and to awaken us to bigger and better ways of looking at the world and interacting with it. We’ve known each other before, he said, and we will know each other again.

Grief is an emotional rollercoaster. You will have your ups and downs and moments of terror and brief moments of peace. You can only go as fast as the ride will take you. Just remember: It will end and you will be okay.

True love is not practical. True love doesn’t always follow the rules. When you are truly in love, you can lose your mind over it.

Plants can feel pressure and emotion. When something is said or done with intention, a plant can respond. So every day we tell our tree that it is beautiful, it will get more and more beautiful. I hope that tree knew how beautiful I thought it was.

There is a pain you can’t think your way out of. You can’t talk it away. If there was someone to talk to. You can walk. One foot the other foot. Breathe in breathe out. Drink from the stream. Piss. Eat the venison strips. And. You can’t metabolize the loss. It is in the cells of your face, your chest, behind the eyes, in the twists of the gut. Muscles, sinew, bone. It is all of you. When you walk you propel it forward. When you let the sled and sit on a fallen log and. You imagine him curling in the one patch of sun maybe lying over your feet. Then it sits with you, the Pain puts its arm over your shoulders. It is your closest friend. Steadfast. And at night you can’t bear to hear your own breath unaccompanied by another and underneath the big stillness like a score is the roaring of the cataract of everything being and being torn away. Then. The Pain is lying beside your side, close. Does not bother you with sound even of breathing.

When a friend suddenly comes to mind for no apparent reason, he said it’s because they are near to us in thought or spirit. He explained that a connection takes place on the thought waves that run between us. Thoughts are things that can reach out and touch us.

I feel like I have lost myself. I want to find the “Me” that went away with you. The part of me that loved so unceasingly without condition. The part of me that loved the way you taught me how to love. The part of me that felt more real than I ever felt before. No one seems to find that “Me” and I can’t find Me either.

There’s a big difference between the head and the heart. Fear lives in the head. Love lives in the heart. The head thinks it knows it all but the heart is always right.

The truest form of love is where you are able to put your own needs aside to do what is best for the one you love. If you could know where I am now and if you love as you say you do, you would never ever wish me back from the love and the comfort and the bliss of where I am and where I wait for you.

You think the final act of love is setting them free to Rainbow Bridge? That is not the final act of love. The final act of love is releasing them from your leash of grief so they can be free in the heaven on the other side of the Bridge. Until you resolve your grief, you bind them to you in the land between Heaven and Earth while they wait, suspended between the worlds, for you to heal. When you are free of your grief, they are free of your grief.

It’s the spark of love’s memory inside your heart that recognizes them and most of the time they recognize you too. That spark is the magnet that always brings us back to each other. Like glue, it binds us together with an invisible cord from lifetime to lifetime, soul mate to soul mate.

You seem to forget that the sun must set. You knew perfectly well that I would not be with you long enough. Still, you weep and cry and ask God ‘Why’ as if it were some kind of surprise. Why? Because love changes everything. Love’s the surprise.

Those who are arrogant and controlling are determined to cling to spoken words but peaceful hearts are unafraid to go deeper beneath the surface.

Once someone learns what a relationship comes to teach, the relationship can move on to make room for new teachers to come in with new lessons and new levels of love.

If you accept that pets can love us as much as we do them, then the logic is clear and cannot be denied. If you believe that there is a heaven for people, then they must be there, waiting for us, when we cross over. Heaven is love, and pets always share that with us.

Soul mates meet in a place where time stands still. You recall where you were when the call came in. The vivid colors of the day. The season. The way the sun was streaming in or how the rain fell upon the glass. That’s how you know it was your destiny. You can remember the smallest details of your meeting. And you thought it wouldn’t matter.

We need to go first because we cannot live without your love and care. If we lived longer than you, we would not and could not survive. It’s supposed to be this way. We also need to cross the Rainbow Bridge before you do so that we can be on the other side to greet you when you get there. We wait at home for you here and we wait at Home for you there. It’s just the way it is.

Some humans are so consumed with trying to control the outcomes of their own lives that they don’t have any idea the part they play in the outcome of someone else’s.

The heart has all the answers. Try it now. Put your hands upon your heart. Ask a question that you already know the answer to. Feel what “no” feels like. Feel what “yes” feels like. Practice this and by doing so you will be creating a line of communication with anyone that you cannot see.

There are recovery programs for people grieving the loss of a parent, sibling, or spouse. You can buy books on how to cope with the death of a beloved pet or work through the anguish of a miscarriage. We speak openly with one another about the bereavement that can accompany a layoff, a move, a diagnosis, or a dream deferred. But no one really teaches you how to grieve the loss of your faith. You’re on your own for that.

Some souls come together just for a little while to teach each other something. It can be confusing because you can think you love someone at first sight and you assume that they are a soul mate. You think it’s supposed to last forever. You share the same dreams because when your mind is asleep, your souls travel to the same place so that you can be together. You think of them and they call within moments, because they are thinking of you too. The truth is that some soul mates stay just long enough to teach you what you need to learn.

We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It's the best deal man has ever made.

When you love without condition, your spirits can never be separated. The love you gave each other holds you together far beyond this life.

Home is not where I live. Home is where I love.

You can never lose me. Someday you will see that I was with you all along. You will find out that what you have loved you can never lose.

Goose bumps are the tangible evidence of vibrational presence. If you have goose bumps, you know that it must be true. Goose bumps are like Truth Detector Machines.

Honor your grief and the pain you feel when you lose a beloved pet. It is the first step toward healing.

The fact is that when you admit that you can’t blame anyone or anything else, you begin to blame yourself. The human mind gives up trying to find an executioner, but still it must blame someone. Anger that is not expressed tends to turn inward and, instead, attacks the very one who feels it. You move from anger and guilt into depression.

You wonder why you can’t see me, Sense me, feel me…? When you are outpouring your emotion, it is like me trying to climb up a waterfall To get to you. But if you are calm and have faith in me, I can sail right over to you On the still waters of your soul.

You think God created us to be born only to grow and then die? Not even the tiniest perennial grows only to die. It comes back again and again when the season and the time is right. Even annual flowers grow seeds as they grow so that they can drop the seeds of themselves and live again year after year, life after life.

Grief leads you to believe that life will never be ordinary again, and it never really will be for it is made extraordinary as it is touched and transformed by our greatest loves and deepest losses.

Anyone who says love is free has never truly been in love. Your lover will need comfort. Your spouse will have bad days. Your child will have their heart broken, more than once and you will be expected to help pick up the pieces. Your beloved pets become a parade of joy and loss. Love costs, sometimes it costs everything you have, and sometimes it costs more. On those days you weigh the joy you gain against the pain; you weigh the energy given from the loving and the energy lost from the duties that love places upon us. Love can be the most expensive thing in the world. If it's worth it, great, but if not, then love does not conquer all, sometimes you are conquered by it. You are laid waste before the breathtaking pain of it, and crushed under the weight of it's obligations.

Love is the most powerful force on earth. The end of fear is where love begins. Then nothing can overcome you.

With some stories, you really can't rush things. And it's often best just to sit back and enjoy the journey for what it is.

Listen, said Beverly. Let me tell you something. There is no Very Friendly Animal Center. That cat is long gone.

The world of dreams is such a wonderful place! That is, if you have love in your heart. If you have madness in your heart, you will have mad dreams. If you have guilt in your heart, you will have dreams that make you feel more guilt. But me, I have love in my heart and room for nothing else. I love my dreams and they love me.

When someone has had an exceptionally challenging or difficult earthly life, those challenges are often by design. Our Master will test those who are ready to expand. The struggles are designed to increase one’s strength and to be a springboard into higher realms.

The heart holds all the knowledge of the universe. Most people barely scratch the surface of what the heart contains. They don’t get out of their overanxious minds. They don’t realize that the entire universe resides in the heart and that is where Everything is waiting.

It was something new for her. New roads, new people, new places, new opportunities and new perspective. This is the one thing that inevitably moves a person through the grief. Growth heals grief.

Your head is so full of worldly “things” while your heart is full of eternal love and faith. Your heart is full of what matters most and that is where I am. That is where we can connect. In a place where there is no fear and no end to love.

Sometimes a tragedy must happen to keep a soul on schedule. This is the reason for things that seem to have no reason. This is the reason that we cannot fathom when we are going through it. Perhaps I will get very sick. People wonder why cancer exists when it is just a clever method to teach people lessons about love and loss. It borrows time or steals it depending on the needs of Heaven. It is a vehicle to get us where we need to be. It calls us home because something needs us there.

Death gets a bad rap. People think that euthanasia is putting their pets “down” when it really is lifting us up. In the first moment, when we come back to earth, we remember the comfort of the Heaven we came from and this is why we cry when we are born. When we are born in Heaven we come in laughing not crying! In birth we have the passage and then the pain. In death we have the pain and then the passage.

When you dream you go inside yourself, even though it makes you feel like you are traveling many miles and light years to go to the dream worlds. This is the irony of all of it. Everything lives within the heart of the dreamer. Your heart can take you everywhere. It’s the world where we are still together. The heart is where you’ll find me and anyone else you have ever loved with all your heart and all your soul.

We think that we are living when we walk upon the earth but the very moment we “die” there, we wake up here! This life on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge is the real one. We find that our life on earth was just a dream, a dream designed to lead us further and further into love. True love grows and then cannot be destroyed. It grows and grows until it is stronger than death.

Intuition is a wonderful gift but it can be both a blessing and a curse. If you can easily tune in to the grief of another, it is very easy to lose your way if you have not yet resolved your own present or past trauma and grief. If you have not healed from your own grief and you turn around and give all you have to give, you will find yourself drowning. Soon there will be nothing left of you.

We are blessed when our loved ones know what they have long before they lose us. It’s the same with people. If they are taken for granted long enough, they can be oppressed to the point that they never experience the joys of life. Life on earth becomes a disappointment for them and Heaven becomes their goal. On the other hand, if they are loved and encouraged and appreciated, they will find all kinds of reasons to keep on living! It is never too late to help someone to see that they are valuable and wanted upon the earth.

You complain of ‘the hole in your heart’ but it isn’t a hole in your heart at all. When I left you I took a piece of your heart with me. I filled up the hole with a piece of mine so that we would never ever be separated.

...The fact is that Dale and Grady had made a pact long before they ever came into this earthly existence. This is why so often there is one physical death that follows another. They are from the same soul family. They are so intertwined that they need to leave together. They are all returning home together.

If we are not taught about love when our brains and hearts are forming, we may never even recognize it when it stands in front of us. We may even run from it. We would miss out on the one thing that makes life worth living.

In a fraction of a moment we fall in love, we break up, we live out a love story that lasts until the end of time. We are soulmates, we are adversaries, we are everything. We are nothing. We are at our fullest potential of every possibility. We are supposed to cross paths for one reason or another. Sometimes we don’t know the reason until it’s far behind us.

She made me her everything. She didn’t realize then that when you make someone your everything, when they are gone you have nothing left. I have since learned that our Master sends us soul mates who teach us to depend on them and then we come to believe we cannot live without them. Then He takes them away to prove to us that we can indeed live without them, but also to prove that we cannot live without Him.

You think it’s me that you love, but it’s really the God in me that you see. It’s the God in me that you love. It’s true. It’s why we love you too. It’s the God in you that looks at me and the God in me that looks back at you. It’s just the Big Bang God in love with Himself.

There is a rule in Heaven that says we cannot tell someone something that might shift the living out of their destiny during their lifetime on earth. People must be led by either their mistakes or by their faith, and this is why they cannot be told certain things ahead of time.

Sometimes people feel they need to control everything, as if they could! Matters of life and death are out of your hands. The more you come to realize this, the harder you try to prove that you can control SOMETHING, anything. All you can really control is your response to what happens. You cannot control matters of life or death and because of this you are not accountable. You cannot be held liable for anything that you have no power over. Guilt, shame and blame make no sense when circumstances are beyond your control.

Love has a timeframe all of its own and love never dies. It is eternal. There is no end. There is no rush. There is no hurrying it. It waits patiently. It waits because it knows that there is no end and that like the sea it comes and goes.

When you feel good you want to go out into the big wide world and make a positive difference. You feel love when you feel good and you want to give that love to everyone you meet. As you go along, you find that most others want what you have and they are usually very willing students, wanting to learn what you already learned so long ago.

Have you ever walked along a beach? You walk towards something in the distance. For the longest while it never seems to get any closer even though you are walking and walking. Then all of a sudden, you are there. You’ve arrived at last. That's what grief is like. Meanwhile we are running with you in the spray of the surf at the edge of the shore where the sand meets the sea. We are cheering you on.

Once we get to Heaven we know everything there is to know. We remember every life we've ever lived. We recall everyone we've ever loved. There is much to know here, but there is not too much to learn. That's why we have to do our learning before we get here.

Humans are funny. The more someone doesn’t want someone, the more that someone wants that someone. The time came when she started pulling away. She had developed a tendency to focus on the things that she didn’t respect in him and eventually that’s all she saw.

Animals are a lot like humans for when we are happy our immunity is strong and love and life force races through our veins. When we are depressed our immunity runs low and we can easily get sick. Many pet parents are very careful about feeding the right food, providing plenty of exercise and buying the right toys and treats. Not that those things aren’t important too, for they are, but the best thing you can do for us is to make yourself happy because when you are happy then we are happy too.

Animal spirits often will appear during the hours between dusk and dawn; also known as the “tween times”. They will always give you something. It may be just a simple pause within the chaos of life to remind you that there is more to life than the details of living it, working it and paying for it. It may be a shred of insight or a flash of recognition that comes to you in a fleeting thought or maybe in a dream in the tween times of your own mind.

Death. I wish the word could be removed from the vocabulary and from the dictionary. It simply does not exist, except in the human mind that was taught that it does exist. People think they are a body and they come to believe that when the body dies, everything they are will die too. It’s not true. The soul lives on. The soul of consciousness exists not only in the body but outside of the body too. We are all souls that cannot be contained or limited by time or space or the physical body. For souls there is no death.

I loved her. I did not know what state of mind I would be in when I got where I was going and I was most worried that in the process I might forget her. I did not ever want to forget her! I held the image of her in my mind so strongly and the eternal love for her so deep within my heart that it could never ever be erased, no matter what. My love for her was stronger than anything that could happen to me.

Our angels often come to us in the times when we are unconscious because those are the times we are free of the continual thoughts of our mind. It is here that we remember who we really are. We remember who we are in our soul. We are greater than the physical life we have been living on earth.

I took one long last look at her before disappearing into the Rainbow Forest where another Master was calling me Home. “I love you Jack I love you Jack I love you Jack…” she kept saying, until I was far from her sight. To this day she still whispers, “I love you Jack,” even when she thinks I can't hear her anymore...but I can. Sometimes what seems to be the ending of something is just the beginning of everything.

The dealing with grief cannot be bypassed. It is a road you must walk, a race you must finish and no one else can do it for you. If you try to sneak through it without it seeing you, it will seep into your life when you least expect it. Grief will not let you go until you satisfy what it came to teach you.

Okay.' I can feel the letters vomit off my tongue. O. K. A. Y. I watch the vet insert the syringe into the catheter and inject the second drug. And then the adventures come flooding back: The puppy farm. The gentle untying of the shoelace. THIS! IS! MY! HOME! NOW! Our first night together. Running on the beach. Sadie and Sophie and Sophie Dee. Shared ice-cream cones. Thanksgivings. Tofurky. Car rides. Laughter. Eye rain. Chicken and rice. Paralysis. Surgery. Christmases. Walks. Dog parks. Squirrel chasing. Naps. Snuggling. 'Fishful Thinking.' The adventure at sea. Gentle kisses. Manic kisses. More eye rain. So much eye rain. Red ball. The veterinarian holds a stethoscope up to Lily's chest, listening for her heartbeat. All dogs go to heaven. 'Your mother's name is Witchie-Poo.' I stroke Lily behind her ears the way that used to calm her. 'Look for her.' OH FUCK IT HURTS. I barely whisper. 'She will take care of you.

I always enjoyed studying languages and I learned from my Master that He wanted humans to be called Human Beings to continually remind them that they are really verbs and that their soul purpose is to BE. I think they tend to forget about this, they are so busy being nouns doing things that won't matter tomorrow.

It can get a little complicated when you have the expectation that you’re supposed to live Happily Ever After with this person when they were designed to stay with you for just a little while. Our Master designs it this way so you make the most of the relationship when you have it. She thought all soul mates were meant to be forever, when some soul mates are just meant to be.

We meet in a place where time stands still. You recall where you were when the call came in. The vivid colors of the day. The season. The way the sun was streaming in or rain falling on the glass. That’s how you know it was your destiny. You can remember all the tiny details of your meeting. And you thought it wouldn’t matter.

So many people are afraid of the ending of their life on earth. Then there are others who are afraid of not being able to leave after their bodies have long failed them. There's nothing at all to be afraid of. Death is the last lesson in the school of life. It is the final stage of growth. Death is the one event that is designed to remove all of your remaining fears. Someday you will find that the things you were most afraid of, like death, were only illusions.

There is a strange intangible place on the outside edges of the human mind. It hangs there like a constant witness. It judges a person's every move, every thought and every action. Some people think it is “big brother” or God, but it is just a critical place inside the person’s own mind that judges and condemns. It is the very place where we judge ourselves when we cross Rainbow Bridge into Heaven.

You think the things you can touch and feel are the things that are real, but they are not. Over time, they all get old and decline. The people, the houses, the rocks and the mountains: one day they will all crumble. This is because they are not as real as the things that last forever. It is another one of the lessons we come to teach.

Whatever they seek, they will find. If they are seeking their loved one in the sky, He will send them clouds so they will find them there. If they seek discord, they will find it. If they seek love, the most precious thing of all, they will be blessed with it. Love and wisdom are the only things you take with you from lifetime to lifetime.

Our Master puts the desire to procreate in us to be sure that we are fruitful and multiply. He knows how important animals are to the planet because most animals He allows to reproduce in great number. He put every one of us on the ark for a reason. Do you think it’s a mistake that dogs and cats have litters of 8, 9, 10 or more and people typically only have one or maybe two? It’s no mistake. It’s because God intends that there is more than enough four-legged love to go around.

Not everyone understands the love that takes place between two soul mates. Once it strikes, you are never the same. Then every song you hear about true love finally makes sense. All the famous love poems resonate in your heart when you read them. You come to recognize those who have also come to recognize the deepest, truest love …and they recognize you too. You cannot experience this level of relationship with someone who has not been into the depths of love and spirit. You cannot fault them. They are on their own path and if you do anything, pity them for not yet knowing what love is all about.

Messengers often come when you struggle with a decision, need support or are trying to find your balance. They can come as animals like coyote and lizard appeared for Kate and for me. They can be spirit guides, angels, family members, ancestors and friends. A messenger can even be me! Many of them you will not notice because you are too preoccupied to see them. There may come a time, however, when you might sense the millions of angels too small to be witnessed, like fairies that live in the curve of a leaf or who sleep under the tiniest rose petal.

Heaven is all around you. You just can’t see us because we are vibrating at a higher level than you are. It’s kind of like a dog whistle. There is a noise, a pitch so high that the human ear cannot detect it but it is there nonetheless, for don’t you see all the dogs come running! When we cross Rainbow Bridge we become only love and love is the highest level of vibration; the highest “pitch” so to speak. This is why you cannot see us. We are here, only gone from your sight until one day you are the same vibration as we are. When you vibrate in love all the time you will not have to ask again if I am here, you will know that I am here with you.

With my limited understanding what I think happened was that God decided to play a fun game. He created a great experiment and BANG and Kapoof! He exploded into millions of trillions of little pieces and they are each one of them us, scattered all over the universe. This would mean that we are all pieces of each other. We all belong to each other. I am part of you, you are part of me, always have been, always will be. If you put us all together, well, maybe that is God.

You can’t “make” someone your soul mate. You can try but it will always be very hard work. Human relationships are hard even when they are easy, so it’s important to be in one with a soul mate. She felt she could learn to love Shane; that she might grow to love him over time. She always felt she could make her mind up and then accomplish anything, but the heart and the mind have different agendas. If she was going to try to make this relationship work, it had to come from her heart, not from ‘making up her mind’. You don’t have to “try” to be anything when you are with your soul mate because they are looking for who you are, not for who you are trying to be.

Oh, to let go of the tangible things and believe in the intangibles like love, joy and faith. It is a hard lesson, for humans are taught that money buys stability but look, there are many rich people who are so unhappy! Look around. The world is yours for the taking. Love is its most precious resource. When we are all united in Heaven, you will value nothing that you have valued here. There is a sense of peace so deep no dream in this world has ever brought even a dim imagining of it.

He stepped close to her; she could feel his breath on her neck. “Eve, you make me not want to die.” She turned to see his face. “I didn’t want to be this, and now it’s all I am.” He put his hands on her cheeks. The look on his face did her in. He was kind, caring, and mourning her losses. Tears wet his cheeks. Eve felt a very deep sob choke her. If he was mourning, so could she. He pulled her into his arms. “Cry. It’s okay. Cry.” Eve felt her knees give. He caught her and carried her to his couch. He petted her hair and let her empty her pain and guilt onto his chest. He kissed the top of her head. For the first time, his actions toward her seemed to have no sexual intent whatsoever. Eve let go of a rope she’d clung to for too long. And she fell. She fell right into him. Wrong or right, she gave up judging. Her lips found his, and he kissed her gently, not demanding any more than she was willing to offer.

Some say we are not like humans but we are more like them than we are different. Man and animals are in the same species as mammals as they have mammary glands that produce the milk to nurse their young. Their lungs breathe air and their blood is warm. They are vertebrates in that their skeletal system and well-designed spines hold their bodies together. Each cell is made of molecules, each molecule is made of atoms, and each atom is made of protons, neutrons and mostly electrons, which are made of waves of fibered light.

Another form of bargaining, which many people do, and she did too, is to replay the final painful moments over and over in her head as if by doing so she could eventually create a different outcome. It is natural to replay in your mind the details. Deep in your heart you know what is true. Your mouth speaks the words, “My cat has died,” but you still don’t really want to believe it. You go over and over and over it in your mind. Your heart replays the scene for you for the express purpose of teaching you to accept what has happened. While your heart tries to “rewire” your mind to accept it, your mind keeps looking for a different answer. It doesn’t like the truth. Like anything else, when you hear it enough, you finally accept that it is true.

Our pets love us unconditionally. Because they are conscious but not “self-conscious,” it’s impossible for them to judge. They do not see us through the warped lens of our self-perceptions. They see us as courageous protectors and loving providers. They see in us all the qualities that really matter. What difference does it make to them if you got fired from your job? None. What difference does it make to them if you gained 20 lbs. back from your last diet? None. That’s because our pets love and accept us at the soul level, in a way that’s primal and simple—just like the universe itself. So, as silly as it might seem, the next time you’re struggling with accepting an issue in your life, ask yourself: Will this matter to my dog? If not, then it shouldn’t matter to you.

The angels came to tell me what I could expect and how to get where I needed to go. I was reassured that I would not have to cross the Bridge alone. There were so many things I did not yet know. I could feel my mental clarity leaving. I fixed my gaze upon her. I watched her as I left. It was like shutting the door of a beloved home for the last time. Like closing up camp for the season. One last look at the ocean before you must leave it behind with hopes of return but with no guarantee. You eventually have to turn away and look the other direction so that you can see where it is you are going.

I know what you are thinking. You can’t now fathom ever forgetting to think about me. You’re afraid that if you move forward, it will take you further away from me. This is a common misconception shared by many people and it delays their healing... It keeps you stuck in you grief and it’s only because you are still clinging to me. You think if you stop grieving that you will lose me. Maybe you even feel if you let go of me that you are abandoning me; maybe you feel that you will hurt my feelings because if it were the other way around you would not ever want me to forget about you. You are afraid that if you love again that you will grow away from me. I am Here! I am here, waiting to run to you when the time comes. It’s unconditional. It’s forever.

There is a period of one to two earth years that humans are to refrain from making big decisions. It’s because you don’t always make the best decisions when you are grieving. Those who make decisions in haste often live to regret them. You must move through the time of suffering, strengthening your faith and being willing to grow through the grief in order to be able to see things differently. As you grow, your blind faith will continue to open your eyes. You will see everything in a whole new light when you come out the other side of grief. Then you will be able to make very good decisions for yourself, better than ever, because of what you learned.

There's not much to say about loneliness, for it's not a broad subject. Any child, alone in her room, can journey across its entire breadth, from border to border, in an hour. Though not broad, our subject is deep. Loneliness is deeper than the ocean. But here, too, there is no mystery. Our intrepid child is liable to fall quickly to the very bottom without even trying. And since the depths of loneliness cannot sustain human life, the child will swim to the surface again in short order, no worse for wear. Some of us, though, can bring breathing aids down with us for longer stays: imaginary friends, drugs and alcohol, mind-numbing entertainment, hobbies, ironclad routine, and pets. (Pets are some of the best enablers of loneliness, your own cuddlesome Murphy notwithstanding.) With the help of these aids, a poor sap can survive the airless depths of loneliness long enough to experience its true horror -- duration. Did you know, Myren Vole, that when presented with the same odor (even my own) for a duration of only several minutes, the olfactory nerves become habituated -- as my daughter used to say -- to it and cease transmitting its signal to the brain? Likewise, most pain loses its edge in time. Time heals all -- as they say. Even the loss of a loved one, perhaps life's most wrenching pain, is blunted in time. It recedes into the background where it can be borne with lesser pains. Not so our friend loneliness, which grows only more keen and insistent with each passing hour. Loneliness is as needle sharp now as it was an hour ago, or last week. But if loneliness is the wound, what's so secret about it? I submit to you, Myren Vole, that the most painful death of all is suffocation by loneliness. And by the time I started on my portrait of Jean, I was ten years into it (with another five to go). It is from that vantage point that I tell you that loneliness itself is the secret. It's a secret you cannot tell anyone. Why? Because to confess your loneliness is to confess your failure as a human being. To confess would only cause others to pity and avoid you, afraid that what you have is catching. Your condition is caused by a lack of human relationship, and yet to admit to it only drives your possible rescuers farther away (while attracting cats). So you attempt to hide your loneliness in public, to behave, in fact, as though you have too many friends already, and thus you hope to attract people who will unwittingly save you. But it never works that way. Your condition is written all over your face, in the hunch of your shoulders, in the hollowness of your laugh. You fool no one. Believe me in this; I've tried all the tricks of the lonely man.

Dear Pen Pal, I know it’s been a few years since I last wrote you. I hope you’re still there. I’m not sure you ever were. I never got any letters back from you when I was a kid. But in a way it was always therapeutic. Everyone else judges everything I say. And here you are: some anonymous person who never says “boo.” Maybe you just read my letters and laughed or maybe you didn’t read my letters or maybe you don’t even exist. It was pretty frustrating when I was young, but now I’m glad that you won’t respond. Just listen. That’s what I want. My dog died. I don’t know if you remember, but I had a beagle. He was a good dog. My best friend. I’d had him as far back as I could remember, but one day last month he didn’t come bounding out of his red doghouse like usual. I called his name. But no response. I knelt down and called out his name. Still nothing. I looked in his doghouse. There was blood everywhere. Cowering in the corner was my dog. His eyes were wild and there was an excessive amount of saliva coming out of his mouth. He was unrecognizable. Both frightened and frightening at the same time. The blood belonged to a little yellow bird that had always been around. My dog and the bird used to play together. In a strange way, it was almost like they were best friends. I know that sounds stupid, but… Anyway, the bird had been mangled. Ripped apart. By my dog. When he saw that I could see what he’d done, his face changed to sadness and he let out a sound that felt like the word ‘help.’ I reached my hand into his doghouse. I know it was a dumb thing to do, but he looked like he needed me. His jaws snapped. I jerked my hand away before he could bite me. My parents called a center and they came and took him away. Later that day, they put him to sleep. They gave me his corpse in a cardboard box. When my dog died, that was when the rain cloud came back and everything went to hell…

and only much later, when Mascha wanted a child, did I realize that love is a deadly poison, a vice, a vice that one wants to see shared, & that if one of the two involved is smitten, the other is often no more than a passive participant, or vixxtim, or possessed. And Moravagine was possessed. Love is masochistic. These cries & complaints, these sweet alarms. this anguished state of lovers, this suspense, this latent pain that is just below the surface, almost unexpressed, these thousand & one anxieties over the loved one's absence, this feeling of time rushing by, this touchiness, these fits of temper, these long daydreams, this childish fickleness of behavior, this moral torture where vanity & self-esteem, or perhaps honor, upbringing & modesty are at stake, these highs & lows in the nervous tone, these leaps of imagination, this fetishism, this cruel precision of senses, whipping & probing, the collapse, the prostration, the abdication, the self-abasement, the perpetual loss & recovery of one's personality, these stammered words & phrases, these pet-names, this intimacy, these hesitations in physical contact, these epileptic tremors, these successive & even more frequent relapses, this more & more turbulent & stormy passion with its ravages progressing to the point of complete inhibition & annihilation of the soul, the debility of the senses, the exhaustion of the marrow, the erasure of the brain & even the desiccation of the heart, this yearning for ruin, for destruction, for mutilation, this need of effusiveness, of adoration, of mysticism, this insatiability which expresses itself in hyper-irritability of the of mucus membranes, in errant taste, in vasomotor or peripheral disorders, & which conjures up jealousy & vengeance, crimes, prevarications & treacheries, this idolatry, this incurable melancholy, this apathy, this profound moral misery, this definitive & harrowing doubt, this despair--are not all these stigmata the very symptoms of love in which we can first diagnose, then trace with a sure hand, the clinical curve of masochism?