Processing...Differently

Here's the update on my oldest and her reaction to the loss of our family dog. In short, I'm just chalking it up to her being her own person. We all react differently to things, so I'm going to put this in that bucket and not worry about it anymore.

She has since discussed it more, and a few days after my last post about her, I sparked a bit of conversation with her about Enzo. I had acknowledged that I missed him, and she started asking a series of questions about him, like how old he was when my husband and I got him, and what he was like as a puppy. Of course this may come from her desire for a new puppy, but I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Then she did mention the topic of death quite a bit over the next few days. Never in reference to anyone in particular and never in the context of any anxiety, but it was running through her thoughts and imagination nonetheless. Yet she still never expressed her feelings of loss, or to this day has ever said that she misses him.

A few days after that, we were driving by a graveyard and she pointed to it and said "A graveyard!" with what I thought would be a similar reaction to seeing something sort of exciting, like say, an add for High School Musical 3 on the side of a bus. I guess I should tone that down a bit. She wasn't thrilled, just sort of in awe. She then said she wanted to go in a graveyard sometime.

I told her that maybe the next time we were able to visit my husband's (sort of distant) family in Philadelphia we could go visit Poppy's grave at the graveyard there. My father-in-law passed away three years ago, and we have not yet been back.

Then my younger daughter joined in the conversation at this point and said she didn't want to talk about that, because Poppy is no longer here, and that made her sad.

Now mind you that this is my child who was 9 months old when he passed away, so she has memories of him mostly built on our stories and photographs over the years. And yet she expresses sorrow at this point.

She amazes me.

So I say to her that even though Poppy is not here, he will always live in our hearts because we will always love and miss him. And then I say the same thing about Enzo. At which point my younger daughter says she wants to make a card for Enzo.

My oldest then tells her little sister that she can't give it to him since he's not here, so she asks why she wants to bother making a card for him.

Now here's another kicker. My younger daughter then tells her big sister that she will make it in her heart.

I mean does that tug on your heartstrings or what? I'm assuming she figures if she makes it in her heart, he'll get the card since he's in there too.

{sigh}

Seriously. I just can't get over how in touch she is with her feelings, and how well she expresses it.

Note to self: See the difference...feel the difference...acknowledge the difference.

Today was my final overt attempt to open the topic for conversation. We were at the library and I saw a book about a boy that loses his dog. Albeit not very well written I read it to the girls anyway [it opens with the line "Jim's dog got run over by a garbage truck! And he's smashed all over!" Danny said when he got to school."] I'm not kidding. But it did talk about Jim having a hard time with the loss and not wanting to talk about it with his friends. So I read it.

And I got nothin'. From either one of them.

We return home and the girl that lives across the street was outside, and it occurred to me that we had never told her that Enzo had died. She was one of his biggest fans and I feel horrible about this oversight.

She and another boy from the next street over were in front of our house, and the first question out of their mouths when they saw us walk over was "Where's Enzo?".

We delivered the sad news. Then they both said they found out from another friend of ours in the neighborhood who is in their class at school (and a close friend of my older daughter's). But they said they had a hard time believing it.

The little girl even said that she found out right before her science test and she was so sad during the test she thinks she might have flunked it because she couldn't pay attention.

Note re-written to self: We are all different.

As for me, I moved from the periodically hysterical phase, into the persistent heavy heart stage, which was then followed up with the sporadic heavy sighs phase.

I know in my heart that we will always miss him, even when he's not in our immediate thoughts.

And even if we don't say it out loud.

Processing

First off, thanks to everyone that has given me their virtual hugs and support since we lost Enzo. It's nice to remember how many laps he lied on and cheeks he licked, whether you wanted him to or not.

We are still processing in our family. My husband and I have been much more affected by this loss, as I would have expected. And we have been wonderful support for each other, drying our tears as we talk about how strange and sad it is not to have him around anymore. It's truly amazing how much your mind and muscles have their own memories, and you have to stop yourself every time you go to do something for him, and he's not there.

As for the kids, I am seeing the reaction I thought I would see from my younger daughter. She's still at that age where she will talk about things and yet it is somehow still distant and not as much of a tear jerker for her. More on that in a minute.

I am not, however, seeing the response I thought I would see from our oldest. She seems to not be processing this loss at all, which worries me. Looking at it from my counseling and professional perspective, I feel like she is shutting out the sadness and not giving it a voice or any recognition. She questions why people say things like "I'll always love Enzo" when he's not around anymore. As if our love should die with him.

And she has hardly said a word about it at all since it happened. I'm getting concerned. I recognize that we are all different and process things differently. I just want to make sure there isn't a lot of sadness welling up inside, waiting to explode. Or worse yet, turn into anger. I tried to explain this to her this morning.

My younger daughter brought up Enzo yet again this morning as we were leaving the house. My three-almost-four-year-old was the one that mentioned him at least a dozen times during the day or two after his death. She started off by acknowledging that he was gone so we didn't need this or that anymore around the house. She just matter-of-factly stated it, in a sweet way that was her method of continually processing what was very real to all of us.

More specifically, on the morning after she found out, my younger daughter came downstairs to breakfast with a picture of him that she had drawn. Eerily, she drew it on black paper. This piece of mourning was a drawing of her and Enzo together. In the middle of Enzo's chest she had put a heart sticker. Then she told me that he had sad eyes, because she thought he was sad when he died. This all brought tears to my eyes, but I contained myself as I have been trying to do around the children. We then had a very nice talk about how we miss him and still love him.

I mean seriously. I don't know if I can take credit for her passion and empathy, but she reminds me so much of myself when I think about it. We both swing hot and cold at the drop of a hat (oh, how I loathe her tantrums), and her sensitivity and insight at her age continually amazes me.

So this morning my younger daughter says she had a dream about Enzo last night. She says "Isn't that silly? He's not even here anymore but I had a dream about him."

I say that it is great that he visited her in her dreams, and that it just means that she misses him.

My older daughter then says that she never thinks about him. And she doesn't say it meanly, just like it's the right answer; like now that he's gone, she's supposed to move on, so that's what she's doing.

I take this opportunity to try to talk about feelings and how it's good to talk about them. I explained that if we get too much of one kind of feeling we can get out of balance. I also say that sometimes when we have too much sadness in us and we don't let it out, it can turn into anger.

She questions this, as she likely should, so I try to explain it a little more, but I don't do a very good job. We are trying to get out the door and I'm on my own with the three little ones, so the whole subject gets sidelined.

Every day I have been trying to prompt her to talk about it, but I'm not getting anywhere. I ask her if it makes her sad, and she just doesn't really go there. I ask her if she misses him and she just gives a little "uh-huh" type answer. I don't push it too far; just once or twice a day I ask about him when the topic comes up.

Since it's in my nature to talk about everything well past the point of enough-is-enough, I have to be careful around this one. But I do think it deserves some attention, so I will continue to nurture it, hoping for a breakthrough.

In the meantime, I hope he comes back to visit us all in our dreams.

I really want to give him another hug and kiss.

Goodbye Old Friend

This week our family had to say goodbye to our dog Enzo. And it was harder than I had ever imagined it would be. Not that you can really prepare yourself for something like this.

Just looking at this picture while I type is giving me a big lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.

We found out a few days ago that he had cancer in his spleen that had spread to his liver, and within 24 hours he had internal bleeding that was incurable. My husband and I were faced with a horrible decision, but a necessary one.

And an experience that I will never forget.

Over the many months that I have been writing this blog, I haven't mentioned him much. But that doesn't mean he wasn't a very present part of our family. In fact there were many times that he was driving me so nuts that I was composing blog entries about him in my head, and titling them "Did I mention we have a dog?". But I knew those blog posts would only have been me complaining about being a pet owner, and I didn't want to go down that road.

The fact is Enzo is the one that first made my husband and I a mom and dad. He was supposed to be my husband's dog as he and I weren't even living together or engaged at the time we got him. But falling in love with his little puppy face was unavoidable.

Over the past eleven years he grew from a hyper puppy to an over-active teenager, then entered adulthood with pride and watched over all the little ones that joined our family after him. Eventually we declared him a senior citizen, complete with gray hair and a bit of a grumpy attitude. In just over a decade he went from our little adorable baby to the patriarch of the family.

We always realized that Enzo was getting less and less attention over the years. We kept saying he was moving farther down the totem pole with each child we added to our growing brood. And we felt a little guilty about that. But I don't think he really noticed. He just had a lot more little hands to pet him and friends to come over and visit. That, and he had a new favorite place for the last seven years: under the high chair.

He was woven into the fabric of our family. Now I see that more than ever. Every time I walk into the house I expect him to be at the door excited to see us. And every time a bit of food drops I have to stop myself from calling him over to gobble it up. I take the kids outside and expect him to be there chasing bubbles or pooping in the neighbor's yard. When we play outside I have an internal alarm that goes off every 4 or 5 minutes to look for him and make sure he's still around our house and not visiting the many friends he has made in our neighborhood over the years.

He was a people lover through and through. He could win over even the most fearful children, giving them kisses on their food-smudged faces. It was because of Enzo that the little girl next door went from being frightened by dogs to being a dog-lover in a matter of a couple years. I fear her parents now have us to thank for her constantly asking to get a dog.

A friend of my husband's said "I don't even like dogs, but I really liked Enzo."

It was just in his nature to win you over, no matter how much you might have been afraid of or annoyed by him.

His so soft ears and big amber eyes.

The way he always thought everyone that came over to our house was here to see him.

His irritating bark at all living beings that walked by our front window.

The sound of him drinking about a billion bowls of water a day.

The way he walked in between your legs and parked himself there for safe keeping.

His love for catching flies or chasing flashing lights.

The way he came running to the kitchen whenever he heard the crinkle of a bag of deli meat.

All the love, energy and chaos that he added to our family.

We will miss it all dearly.

Goodbye old friend.