Day 247 in 2020 (the silent disappearance)

Loss is hard. Change is hard. And they are both even harder when they are not quite clear or finite around the edges. After weeks of struggle, or really more like months, we returned our beautiful, sweet, Dalmatian puppy to her breeder. She was fearful, and skittish, and very uncomfortable in our busy and loud home. No matter what methods we used or what help we sought, her fear seemed only to grow, and as her fear grew, the size of her response grew in kind so that she went from a cowering puppy to a growling puppy to a snapping puppy. If love could have fixed it, I would not be writing the heart wrenching message. I thought about saying nothing, about letting the moment and its sadness float away into the air like so many hopes and dreams, about letting her become a silent disappearance to those who only see our lives in pictures, but that wouldn’t be fair to her or to us. It will take time to heal, and when we do we will not want her to be a silent disappearance, but a beautiful fleeting moment of hope in a difficult time that lives in only in memory.