"How are you?"

The simplest question, that's hardest to answer.

If you’ve lost someone you love, grief is more than a word to you. It’s a deep hole, a cloud of darkness, an inescapable, unpredictable, overwhelming sensation. And I’m so sorry that you can relate.

When we first discovered the mass hiding within Zeke’s chest, our hearts immediately dropped. We weren’t strangers to grief. Just three years earlier, we traumatically lost our 13-week old vizsla puppy to Leptospirosis, after 10 heartbreaking days of blood transfusions and dialysis treatments. We were left with a whopping amount of medical debt, and no puppy to show for it. After waiting 8 months for Ziggy’s arrival, we were in shock over how quickly our future with him had been ripped from us.

After Ziggy passed, we were absolutely terrified, but we nervously opened our hearts to little, chunky, “blue boy.” Zeke was exactly what we needed in the vise of grief. He kept us busy, as puppies do, and he made us smile and laugh again, when our hearts were dark and cold. He quickly became our everything, and our days revolved around him.

Fast forward three years and we were spending many weekends competing with Zeke in agility or showing him in conformation, going to biweekly training classes, learning tricks, and working from home with him by our sides constantly. His happiness was all that mattered, because it was what made us happy too.

When the vet called to say, “I’m so sorry, but Zeke has a very enlarged lymph node in his chest cavity” (which eventually became known as a tumor or mass), Dave and I hung up the phone and sobbed. Hard. How could that be true of our sweet, healthy, athletic boy? How could this possibly be happening to US? Again??

The trauma of the following two months is for another day, another post. But today we are here. Without Zeke. Trying to figure out how to be, who to be, without him.

And so we get the question often, “How are you?”. And the truth is, I don’t know. Some days I spend my time holding back tears until I have a safe place to cry. Some days I sob for a full hour in therapy. Some days I write out stories about him with tears trickling down my face. Some days I smile at his memory. And some days I can’t even believe he’s gone. It still feels unnatural to say that “Zeke died.” My brain doesn’t want to believe what my heart knows is true.

A lot of days I feel angry: at people with dogs who are turning three or older; at owners on their phones while walking their dogs; at people who neglect or abuse animals; at myself, for not knowing something was wrong with Zeke sooner; at Beezer, for not being Zeke.

And I simultaneously know it’s not fair to be angry, and that I have every right to be. That my time with Zeke was too short, and that I was so damn lucky to have the days I did with him. That we gave him the greatest life, and that I wish I could have done more for him.

And so if you ask me, “How are you?”…chances are I will lie.

Because the truth is so much harder than, “Okay.”

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Shortly after losing Zeke, I read the book, “Between Two Kingdoms,” by

Suleika Jaouad

and loved her descriptions of learning how to live again. I began consuming her content on social media and here on Substack, because she seemed to be one of the only people who could put words to what I was feeling. Her demons are far different from mine, but she recently wrote, “What I’ve been yearning for is something to help me navigate the bewildering contradictions in life, to help me learn that forever lesson of how to hold the beauty and cruelty of life in the same palm.”

And so, as I continue to put one foot in front of the other, I intend to use writing to try to learn the same lesson. To hold the juxtaposition of carrying on without the other half of my soul, and leaning into the beauty of this next chapter of life. If you care to join me on this grief-stricken journey, you can subscribe below. No promises as to the content, frequency, or quality of my ramblings, but they’ll be here if you are juggling the beauty and cruelty of life as well.

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