Three years is a long time between posts. For long lost readers of this blog I have finally felt able to update. Grey was killed in a dreadful accident on the evening of December 22nd 2015. He was seven and a half years old. He won't have known anything. For him it was very quick. He went on a high on our walk, a place we've loved for years.
I've put off writing this because I didn't want the horror of the accident to cancel out the amazing seven and half years we had together. I was afraid that my words don't do justice to how important he was to me. I've thought about the accident every single day since it happened, but I've also thought about so much more. I also didn't want to consign Grey to history by writing a final passage about him. Because the truth is that every day so many things that he taught me or that I learned through living with him are ever present. He was, as many will know, a difficult dog to handle. I read somewhere that it's the difficult dogs that teach us so much. He found much of life's every day things hard to deal with, but managed to find the calm to let the simple joy of being alive sink in. There's a lesson in there!
I felt an unexpected lightness today. The day, the dreaded day. The day I've thought about for a year. I realised today that a day can't be worse than the awfulness of what happened. That I can't lose again what I lost. But I can remember all the good that came from the years we spent together. I've written a thousand imaginary letters to Grey in the last 365 days. Which seems strange, because of course I know that Grey was a dog and I wouldn't need to write a letter to him for him to know how I was feeling.
My life was changed for having him. My life was changed for losing him. This is the last photo of Grey that I have. Taken just before I went to Berlin on a rare holiday away from him and Polka. It's exactly as I like to remember him. Run free, always.
Grey
28/04/2008 - 22/12/2015
