A Year of Mourning

On May 16, 2020 we said goodbye to Jake.

He is still the wallpaper on my phone. I still think about him every day. I get teary over him probably once a week. My friend Natasha gave me a simple silver ring with his name on it. This time last year, I didn’t even take it off to sleep. I still wear it most days. 

I wouldn’t have guessed it at the time, but I miss waking up like this. Aang and Cloud stay by our feet.

Dean and I still have the space on our bookshelf for him and when one of us is thinking about him particularly hard, we’ll light a candle in front of his pictures there. We still have the little doll Jake that my sister made on the bed. He usually ends up tucked between the pillows, which is exactly what Jake used to do.

A lot of different religions and old customs had defined ‘mourning periods’ which is interesting to me. On the one hand, how dare anyone tell me how long I’m allowed or ‘required’ to mourn. On the other hand, it’s almost nice that you are publicly given this space to live your life and have society acknowledging that your heart is torn. I’m not going to delve deeper into the additional practices that go into some mourning periods.

A few of them specifically mentioned a year's time. For some of them, the entire mourning period was a year long. For others, the mourning was shorter, with some kind of ceremony or remembrance at the year mark. This feels right to me.

Now, I feel that, honestly, you never ‘get over’ the death of a loved one. You carry it with you. It just feels different over time. And everyone’s grief for every individual loss will be slightly different. And I’m not here to tell anyone how to do it. This is just how I feel.

This was in my Facebook memories from a year ago the day I write this. No other cat I’ve lived with has ever napped with me this way. Jake and I did it all the time. They were the best naps. Photo by Dean.

In my experience, one constant rings consistently true; the first year is the hardest.

It’s the year of doing things without for the first time. Holidays, seasons, trips, gatherings. Not to mention the little daily things that you did, often unconsciously, to make space for this soul in your life. It’s the album in your phone gradually containing more photos without them than with them. It’s the gradual fading of their voice in your mind’s ear. The gradual accumulation of new things, habits and friends that they never knew. That never knew them. It’s the ache of a constant being that you loved with all of your heart slowly turning into a memory.

My Facebook memories for the last month have chronicled Jake’s decline. It was obvious that I knew I was losing him because I put up so many long videos of us outside with him or me just dancing around in the kitchen with him. (Literally, a few days ago I watched a 7 minute video of me dancing with Jake in the kitchen. - It’s posted partially muted because Warner Brothers has claimed the rights to some of the songs.) I’m glad I have them. I may tear up when watching them, but I love seeing us together and hearing his voice.

I was talking about pets yesterday with one of my students and I mentioned getting Aang and Cloud two months after Jake died. She guessed that I had not been ready and I wasn’t, I don’t think I ever would have been ‘ready’ just as I never would have been fully ‘ready’ to let him go. Even on the day Lap of Love came over, after he was gone, I kept holding him and saying, “I never want to let you go, Jake, I will never be ready to let you go.” Finally the vet technician had to (very sensitively) say that she knew I didn’t want to let him go, but was I ready to put him in his basket?

I was not ready for Aang and Cloud, but they pulled me out of a really hard place. I have still mourned for Jake this entire year, and will continue to miss him, but they showed me that there is room in my heart to love just as fully as I loved Jake while still grieving him totally and completely.

I’m not sure what I will do on Sunday to remember Jake. I hope that wherever his atoms and energy ended up, he’s happy. And that he knows I love him and miss him.