It’s very difficult to find the words to describe the sorrow you feel when a beloved pet passes on. Possibly, this is because you feel like no one else will understand how you feel. For this reason, many grieving pup parents never talk about the loss of their pet, but Reddit user Rawtashk found the perfect outlet for his grief. He wrote a beautiful letter to his dog Drago and shared it with community on r/dogs.
Rawtashk kindly gave us permission to share this incredible tribute. Here are excerpts from the powerful letter:
Dear Drago,
Hey, buddy. It’s been a week now. It’s been exactly 7 days since I held your head in my hands and repeated “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry” with tears streaming down my face while I watched you take your last breaths. It’s been 168 hours since I saw what little light that was left go out of your eyes and felt your body go limp.
Sometimes it feels like a dream, but I don’t know what kind. Half the time it’s like I’m in the middle of a bad dream, but maybe I’ll wake up and see you at the foot of the bed. Or maybe I’ll look over right now and see you lying by my chair when you’d always be when I was on my computer.
Sometimes it’s like you were just a dream. I want to fall asleep again and hope that I re-start that same dream. Was it really 9 years ago that I first saw you? We were suppose to have another 2 or 3 or even 5 years to hang out and go on adventures, or was that all just a happy dream? Then I see the box on the mantle that has your ashes, and I know it’s real.
Sef misses you. You’ve always been that big brother for him to follow around. He’s never been as smart as you and I realize now that he would take his cues from you. Like how you guys would nap over on the dog beds while Melissa and I would watch TV. He’d see you go lie down, and he’d follow along with you. He doesn’t nap and chill out over there now. He stays close to the couch, because he doesn’t have you to follow around. He doesn’t run around the back yard either. He goes out to pee and poop, and then he stands in the middle of the yard and looks around.
I walk around the house during the day and I feel like something is missing. And it hits me at random times through the day. I went over to the Docking building on Tuesday to look for Herman Miller cubicle panels, and randomly thought of you. I had to sit down and gather myself before I could get back to looking.
I stood in the middle of the road and watched the van from Heavenly Pet Memorial drive away with your body in it. I stood there and watched it until it was out of sight, and then I watched some more, hoping that this was just some terrible dream that was about to end. It felt like a part of me got ripped from my chest and was running away.
Melissa and I went out to eat on Sunday after the van came and took you away. I just wanted to get out of the house and think about something else. It was a mistake, because when I walked through the door when we got home…I realized that you weren’t going to come around the corner to see me. I stood there in the entryway for at least 5 minutes, hoping that somehow that would change, that your pointy ears and excited face would peek around the corner to see who it was. But that never happened, and it hurt more than I thought it would.
Remember how we would take a nap together sometimes when I came home for lunch? 9 years after being adopted and I think you were still afraid that I would leave you, because you’d always touch me while you were asleep, just so I couldn’t go anywhere without you knowing. Well, I haven’t taken a nap in 10 days, because I can’t touch you while I nap anymore. I never once thought you would leave such a hole in my heart that I couldn’t even take a nap once you left.
I miss you.
You can read the entire tribute here.
