It has been 3 days since I put my sweet dog Chloe to sleep. I have experienced a wide range of emotions since then – the most immediate:

Relief: (thank God that her suffering is at an end!)

Guilt:  (could I have done ANYTHING more? Could I have changed something in the past to prevent this?) Sadly, this quickly chips away at the feeling of relief

Numbness: (and no, I do NOT  mean “Comfortably Numb” as Pink Floyd describes), but disturbingly numb – almost detached from myself, shock (this can’t be real?) I am going to go home and she will be there, just like always, right?

Profound Sadness: A DEEP pain has finally crept into my heart and staked out a spot to set up camp….

These feelings are all too familiar when dealing with a major loss. It is very much part of the five stages of grief that Elizabeth Kuebler Ross so brilliantly documented many years ago when working with hospice patients and their families: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and finally, Acceptance.

For me, the deep sadness/depression is the scariest and worst emotion. I feel immediate anxiety that if I ALLOW myself to feel these feelings, that I will might be swallowed by them. That I will somehow pass “through the looking glass” and be unable to return to a normal life of the usual “ups and downs” – terrified that I will forever be bound to a life of deep sorrow and grief.

I am SO afraid that this sadness will overwhelm me. And so I do my best to shove it aside.

But every once in a while, there is NO escaping it and the tears come without mercy. For some reason (though this has happened many, many times) I forget that I have never, not once, actually gotten “stuck” in a state of irreversible sadness. In fact, when I do let the tears come forth (for as long and as hard as they do) – I tend to feel much better after. I feel lighter, and relieved. The very worst that comes from it is a stuffed nose and puffy eyes.

I write this for all of you who may feel “stuck” right now. Afraid, like me, that if you allow yourself to feel the pain, that it will suck you into perpetual darkness. So I would like to offer you a nudge, and the reassurance that it is GOOD for you to let it out. You won’t feel great, but you won’t spiral down into despair either.

Personally, I would take a stuffy nose any day over a broken heart.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” -Mathew 5:4