Today an old friend wrote to me. She's a dog lover too, so I figured she'd understand if I mentioned something about still being lost without Alice, still feeling the pain of that loss. I should've known better. I saw this friend 2 days after Al's death, she made some comments even then like it was time to move on (sure, right, 2 days after the most traumatic event of my life) and ever since, her emails have said similar things. Today was another such thing, she said Alice wouldn't have wanted me to be so upset by her passing. Bullshit! Alice was the queen of the universe, queen of my heart and our home, the center of all things. Of course she'd want and deserves an extended mourning period.

I had a carefully crafted response all ready to go but at the last minute hit cancel instead of send. Nothing I could say would change her mind, only the day her own beloved dog passes away will grant her a new perspective on other people's pain. For now, I'm still grieving as I need to, some days I'm fine some days I miss her like crazy. And so what? I'm still functioning and in a lot of ways doing pretty well. Sometimes that's all you can ask. Sometimes that's enough.