Wish You Were Here
On grief, being witnessed, and the permission nobody gave us.
After feeding the animals, I decided to walk down to the gate to pick up a package that had arrived. It was a beautiful spring evening. The light was soft, the air was warm. It’s about a ten minute walk from my house to the end of the driveway, and I don’t usually listen to music on that walk, but this night I did.
When I rounded the bend, I saw Loki's spot. Where he'd slow down and forage along the edge, completely in his own world.
I said it quietly.
Oh Loki, I wish you were here.
The next song started playing, and it was Wish You Were Here. Pink Floyd.
Not on shuffle. Not even a song on my playlist. Random.
I stopped walking. I stood there and I felt it move through me. Not just the song, but him. His presence. Like a warm head nuzzle saying I’m still here.
I took it all in before I continued.
When I reached the gate, I noticed there were actually two packages waiting, not just one.
One was what I’d come for. The other had my friend’s name on the return label.
My first thought was to just take them both inside and open it at home.
But I didn’t.
Something about the evening, Loki’s presence still so heavy around me, the song still sitting in my chest, made me stop. I set the bigger package on the ground and opened hers right there.
Inside was a handwritten card. Her two daughters, both under ten, had drawn pictures on the inside. And tucked in with two crystals was a small crocheted dog.
One of her girls had made it.
The note said: I’m sorry your dog Loki died. I made a dog for you.
I held that little crocheted dog and I just wept.
I sat there and I cried. Not falling apart, it was something different. Because underneath the grief I could still feel him. His presence was so strong it was almost physical.
And then on the walk back, I started talking to him out loud.
I said I missed him. I said I wished I could feel his fur.
And the wind moved.
I said I wished I could wrap my arms around him.
And the wind moved again.
Every time I spoke what I was missing out loud, something answered.
The past two weeks have been hard. Some of it I expected. Some of it blindsided me.
But I have been held.
I told my local spiritual circle first. And then the wider community followed. Animal professionals, healers, my clients, people who understand what it means to love an animal the way I love mine. One friend built me a beautiful crystal healing grid. Gifts have been arriving… little acknowledgments, little offerings that say we see you, we see him, we hold you. When I tell the people in my life that I’m still hurting, two weeks later, they don’t flinch. They don’t check the calendar. They just stay present.
I don’t take that for granted. I know how rare it is.
Because I wasn’t always here. I wasn’t always surrounded by people who know how to sit inside grief without squirming.
I remember losing my cat Jolie when I was still in the corporate world. I left work early the day she died. The next morning I couldn’t move. I called my boss and said I needed to take a sick day. He told me I couldn’t use a sick day just because my cat died.
So I put on my suit. Like nothing happened.
I did my makeup. Like nothing happened.
I walked in. Like nothing happened.
I ran the meetings. Like nothing happened.
I managed my team. Like nothing happened.
I smiled when people asked how I was and said I’m great, thank you. Like nothing happened.
I was shattered inside and not one person around me knew. Not because they were cruel. But because our culture never taught us how to hold each other in grief. Because death is taboo. Because feelings are inconvenient. Because there is apparently a correct amount of time to be sad, and a correct kind of loss that earns you the right to fall apart.
And a cat doesn’t qualify.
Nobody told me I was allowed to take up space.
Here’s what nobody tells you about grief.
It has no timeline. It has no rules. It doesn’t care about your calendar or your meetings or what’s appropriate or what people are comfortable with. It will hit you in the middle of a grocery store, on a random Tuesday, two years later, like it just happened.
And when you lose someone you love, human or companion animal, part of you goes with them. You don’t just lose the being. You lose the relationship. The routine. The warm body next to yours. The specific way they loved you that nobody else ever will.
You grieve all of it.
To put a timeline on that. To decide what losses are worthy of tears and which ones aren’t. To tell someone they can’t use a sick day because it was just a cat. That’s not just unkind. It’s a kind of violence. A quiet one. The kind that teaches people their pain doesn’t matter. That they don’t matter.
And this is why so many of us are walking around with decades of unfelt grief stored in our bodies.
I see it in my work all the time. People sit across from me and something cracks open and they start to cry. Really cry. And almost every single time, the first thing they say is:
I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying like this.
I do.
It’s because they’re finally in a space where they’re allowed to. Where nobody is going to check the clock or shift uncomfortably or tell them to pull it together. Where their grief, however old, however complicated, however inconvenient, is allowed to take up space.
Where they are allowed to take up space.
I know not everyone has what I have.
I know not everyone has a spiritual circle that shows up. A friend who sends crystals and a handmade dog. A community that doesn’t flinch when you say you’re still hurting weeks later.
And if that’s you, if you’ve never been witnessed in your grief, I want you to know something.
It’s not because your pain doesn’t deserve it.
It’s because nobody taught us how. We live in a culture that looks away from death, that puts time limits on sadness, that hands you a tissue and changes the subject. Most of us never learned how to hold someone in their pain without trying to fix it or rush it or make it smaller.
But that capacity exists. In the right spaces, with the right people, something opens.
There’s a difference between someone who shares their own loss to say I understand, and someone who makes your grief a detour into their own story. And there’s something rarer than both, someone who simply stays. Who doesn’t need to fill the silence or fix the pain or make it mean something yet.
Someone who actually listens. Not waiting for you to finish so they can tell their own story. Not steering the conversation somewhere more comfortable.
They don’t offer solutions. They don’t check the clock. They just hear you. They see the path you’re walking. They witness it without flinching.
And something that has been held too tightly for too long finally gets to exhale.
It might feel scary at first. Being truly seen when you’ve spent years making yourself smaller, that’s vulnerable in a way that can feel almost unbearable before it feels like relief.
But you deserve that relief.
You always did.
Nobody told you that you were allowed to take up space. To grieve loudly or quietly or for as long as it takes. To love an animal with your whole heart and fall apart when they leave.
But you were. You are.
On Friday evening I walked down my driveway and the wind answered me every time I
spoke his name. A song played that had no business playing. A child made me a dog because she was sorry mine died.
I was held by all of it.
And Loki was there. Not the way I want him to be. But there.
That has to be enough for now.
And somehow, in the most unexpected moments, it is.