ME! Era: Considering Another Dog

I'm supposed to be practicing self-care and doing things that help alleviate stress. The point is to lower my cortisol, drop the stress weight that hangs around no matter how much I exercise, and do things that I enjoy that help with both of those things. 

And so...I've been thinking that maybe it's time to get another dog.  

My soul dog was a Boxer, and he was the best good boi anyone could ever hope to find. More than just a soul dog, he was the brother of my soul, the spirit that matches who I feel I would be if I wasn't constantly weighed down with anxiety, stress, and the urge to panic. Goofy one moment, utterly dignified the next, he lived life in the surety that the sun would rise every morning, and I would always love him. 

He died in my arms on the way to the emergency vet. I heard his last breath almost as clearly as I felt it. I felt his heart falter and stop for the last time and his weight fully sag into my body as all tension left his muscles. I felt my heart shatter into 7, 621 pieces and heard the strangest roaring in my ears. Turns out that was the sound of my own screams, I just couldn't feel it. 

That was January 14th, 2024. 

I don't actually remember a lot from January 15th until sometime at the end of March. I was only allowed two weeks to mourn, and I remember that time being dark and painful. When my allotted mourning period came to an end, I had to just shut it off. I took the entire file in my brain and locked it up. I apparently went into basic function mode and performed the motions of living, but just barely. I got my head above water at the end of March, just in time to sustain an epic cervical spine injury that took me down the rabbit hole of pain until September. But that's another story. 

A few months ago, my therapist asked me about my relationship with him. He'd been gone for two years at that point, so I was astonished to find myself sobbing before I got out more than a handful of words. No one ever asks about him, and until that moment no one had asked about him. About me, sure. How I felt and how I was doing. But no one had ever asked me about us. 

And the file that hadn't been opened for two years was waiting for me to unlock it. Like Pandora's box, it brought suffering and pain but also hope. 

I thought I was over it, but apparently, I was just avoiding it. 

And so, for a couple of months two years after his passing, I finally finished my mourning through the therapeutic process.  

His name is Ripley. 

His name was Ripley. 

He was my Ripley. 

The silence that pervaded this house when he left it was so loud, I couldn't bear to be here. I used to go to the gym for three hours a day just to avoid the creek where we walked or exercising in the house that he haunted. And then my chihuahua died and the silence grew louder. 

They never told me that each death would create a silence like this. Their little life sounds: breathing, stretching, collars jingling, nails a tapping, tails thumping...they echo through the walls. And when one is gone, it gets noticeably quieter. And then another goes and it gets even quieter. Sometimes the silence is so loud my ears ring with it, and I have to open a window to hear the windchimes and the wind and the trees, or I turn on the ocean waves and close my eyes. 

We still have one dog left: she's very old and her time will come. And I don't want to know what this house sounds like without a dog in it at all. 

And so I think I need to get another dog before the final silence comes. 

I think so.

Until I don't. 

Because just thinking about Ripley makes me cry. You see, the file is unlocked now, so when that file gets pulled, a decade of his life pours out with it. The happy moments. The stressful moments. The tender moments. And the crippling pain of loss because he's not here. 

He's gone. He just took that fragment of my soul that I recognized when I found him and he absconded with it to Valhalla. Does Odin even know the value of the soul that Ripley took from this earth? 

And he absolutely took it when he left. I didn't get that fragment back. I know because it felt like we were part of each other and now that he's gone I feel like a literal part of me is missing. I feel the empty space and then I am sad. 

Would another dog help? Would another dog hinder? 

How many times in a single life can you form that kind of bond? 

Am I even capable of bonding again?

And to be clear, I'm not expecting to find another Ripley. I'm looking for Brennan. The counterpart to Ripley, the personality that will acknowledge that empty space inside of me and settle quietly next to it, not inside of it, creating space of its own in a way that is calm, tempered, and forgiving. 

When I went looking for Ripley, I was looking for the dog that fit the name, because the being I was searching for specifically would have a personality that fit the name, and I knew the dog that fit the name was the one I needed. And I knew that one day Ripley would be gone and I would have to search for Brennan: they've always been part of my plan.

Brennan means "descendant of Braonán" in Gaelic. Braonán comes from braon, it means "tear". Descendent of tears. 

I didn't actually know that at the time that I planned all of this, before I went looking for Ripley. For two years, I told everyone that I was going to adopt a Boxer and his name would be Ripley, and then after Ripley had passed into the beyond I would find Brennan, who would support me through the ache of loss. A musician friend from Ireland told me about the origins of Brennan, in the weirdest cosmic twist. 

But that's how I knew. And how I know. 

Brennan was always planned for the inevitable post-Ripley future, the dog meant to follow in the wake of tears. 

So now I have to decide: am I really going to do it?