Keep Moving Forward

If you're going through hell, keep going.

Did Churchill say that?

You can Google it after you finish reading this. 

Whoever said it was absolutely right. Why would you want to delay going through something hellish? As if you would choose that - right? Get me tf outta here is what I'm sayin' on the regular.

Certainly in terms of moving through grief, which I realize I've written about quite a bit these days this saying is, as they say "hitting different" now. I finally told our neighbors about Bongo. They saw him the day he died - they were the last people who knew him outside our immediate household, to see him on a walk. But they didn't know what happened after we parted ways at the park that day. They both just realized they hadn't seen the two of us on walks together.

I did share the news kind of abruptly and maybe poorly, but I just had to get it out.

I literally said it out of the car window to them as they were raking leaves on their property last weekend. It was a drive-by BLURT! And I wish I had handled it better, but I was relieved to have said it. Kinda like the way you feel that relief when you hurl. Word vomit. Maybe.

They both remembered seeing him on that final walk. Both noticed they hadn't seen us for a while...wondered what happened. Now their question mark could make way for a period at the end of the story.

No surprise, to me, that not long after sharing this news I found myself able to walk in my own neighborhood. It happened today. I hadn't done that since June 20th. My memory is far from photographic level but I'd be hard-pressed to think of a time when I walked the streets of my neighborhood without a dog since we got him. He was my walking buddy.

Granted, I didn't take our normal route. But I walked alone. Just me strolling past places he'd peed a hundred times. Just me with no poop bags, no treats, no one to look up at me with brown eyes and lolling tongue as if to say, "isn't this great?"

I didn't love it.

I didn't hate it.

I did it. A period at the end of this story that is sure to be followed with another sentence. Another symbol of having moved forward. Another way to keep going.