"The dog was created specially for children. He is the god of frolic." ~ Henry Ward Beecher

I have been grieving deeply for my best friend, my lover, my soul mate. My husband. He means everything to me and his death ripped my soul in two. I am searching for myself but I don't think I'm here yet. I'm still in that fog that glides in and surrounds the grief-stricken that moment the words process in your brain. "He (or she) has died. There was nothing we could do."

I've endured the death of loved ones before, too many times already. I was an orphan by the time I was twenty-eight. By twenty-eight I had already lost my grandparents and a baby. During my first marriage I had feared death because I did not want to leave my two children alone with their father. After I married my Marine, I had never thought about his dying. He was too strong. He seemed unconquerable. But he wasn't indestructible.

His death has almost destroyed me. It has taken something from me I couldn't afford to lose. Him. I don't think anyone can really know what a death will make them feel or do. You can't predict how you will try to defy it, justify it, rationalize it, or the hardest, accept it. None of the other deaths I've struggled through taught me any better how to fit the pieces together. And this time, they’re way too broken to bother.

I've tried to make sense of his dying, going through my photos, my memories, the tangible things he left behind. He made it easier for me because everything he left is beautiful. His smile that lights his eyes in my photos of him, all the love I felt from him, and all the things he wore and used. I've saved it all. My husband quilt is very far along. I plan on a followup to the Husband Quilt hub a little later. It has opened the door to a small at-home business of making other memorial quilts that give comfort and solace to others.

I do have one other thing, actually two other things. I have dogs. Scottish terriers to be exact. I have a Carmen Sophia and a Scootie Wootums.

I named him after a star dog in a Dean Koontz book. Scootie has brindle sprinkles like little stars around his eyes and all through his tail, like star trails, as if he came down fresh from heaven. He is the sensitive one, the one who misses my husband the most. And I know that people say dogs only pick up what the people around them are feeling, and I am very depressed right now; not pill popping depressed, but the kind that needs to be lived with to get through. But I know Scootie misses my husband. Since it's my hub and my dog, it's my opinion. Besides, look at that little face. He has soulful eyes. He has deep thoughts. He curls up beside me at night and is the giver of lots of kisses. He loves to kiss. Yes, I kiss my dog on the nose on occasion. He deserves it. He is the strong silent type but he will talk incessantly while I'm getting him leashed for his walk. That's my Scootie. The heart of a poet and the soul of a wallflower.

Carmen Sophia is the wild gypsy girl.  She's wild in that in her heart she can't imagine not being absolutely right.  She's a gypsy in that she's traveled with me from place to place and all she needs of a home is me.  She is definitely a girl in that her confidence in herself is fragile.  She has to check to make sure I'm not angry with her, or she hasn't gotten too close to that invisible line in the sand.  She loves me with all her heart and she struggles to be on equal terms with me.  My husband was the alpha male and I was her mommy when he scolded her.  Now, she is having to learn that the alpha male is left the pack forever and the dynamics have changed.  But she is a good and loving friend and we're working it out.

They keep me in check.  I think I would have drowned if it hadn't been for them.  I worry about them.  They are my alarm clock in the morning.  They make me think of food because they want to eat at 5 PM.  And so then do I.  They cuddle beside me when I completely break apart and they try to make me laugh.  They coax me to walk and engage in something real, them, rather than in my fantasies and memories of him.  They are better than pills or grief therapy because I don't think humans can't relate to helplessness in others since they fight against it so hard in themselves.

Death takes away our control.  It reminds us that we, too, will meet it and no matter if our hospital room is crowded, or if you are alone at home expecting no one to check on you for the next couple of days, you will always meet it alone.  It is something we cannot think about day to day.  And grief is something I have to face minute to minute.  I will for a long, long time.

Scootie Wootums and Carmen Sophia keep me going. They keep my grief in check. I can only cry for a little while before they start licking my face, pushing me with their cold noses to come back to them. They love me and they need me. But I need them more. I need their innocence, their belief in me, and their acceptance that the leader of the pack, though he has died and is terribly missed, they accept it as something beyond our control has happened. So I must learn to accept it, too. I have to, or supper will be late and that is unacceptable to my two furry friends.

Grief has reduced me to a certain child-like behavior of being afraid of the dark and crying because I miss my husband as inconsolable as a small child who believes her mother will never come back.

My husband is never coming back.  I will cry for a long time but Carmen Sophia and Scootie Wootums are here and will stay with me for as long as they can.  They are my gods of frolic and were sent especially to my husband and me.  To me.