Grief keeps reopening the door my loving mother walked out of

I don’t handle emotional losses well. I never have. And every time I face another loss of someone or something very important to me, I’m a mass of confused emotions.

Tonight, I’m dreading the coming loss of my dearly loved dog, Lucy. Everyone has experienced such loss at one time or another, but even this sort of loss leaves me feeling helpless and scared.

I know why I feel this way, though — and it all starts with my mother.

I loved my mother and she loved me. That’s such a fundamental statement for a human to make that it seems a bit hollow. Everybody loves his or her mother. Every mother love her child. On some archetypal level, that’s true. But it wasn’t always so simple for me.

My mother left my family when I was 5 years old. The truth of what really happened is far more complicated, but as I grew up, all I could really internalize is that my mother abandoned me. I was too numb to what I felt to ask the real questions that swirled inside my child mind.

Did my mother not love me? Was I not good enough for her to want me? What was wrong with me?

I’ve written about my complicated relationship with my mother quite a bit in the past. I don’t have anything genuinely new to say about that. But as I face another loss of something important to me tonight, I find myself feeling the stabbing pain of that original emotional wound in my life.

For weeks, I’ve been dreading a death that I know has to happen before too long. My dog, Lucy, is old and feeble. She’s been going downhill for months. I’ve been through the process enough before to know that I don’t have much time left with her.

For some people, dogs and cats are “just animals.” To me, they’ve been the only creatures in life who haven’t disappointed me. They’ve been the loving and loyal friends who I’ve felt I could count on. And every time I lose one of my cat or dog friends, it pushes emotional buttons in me that make me feel the loss that I felt as a child.

I sometimes feel the same emotional buttons pushed when I lose people in my life, but not often.

Every time I’ve really felt this powerful pang about a person, it’s been about a woman I’ve loved. At times, I’ve watched a loving relationship slip away and I’ve known that I pushed her away. I’ve been filled with regret for decisions I’ve made. A few times, I’ve watched a woman walk away and there was nothing I could do about it.

Everyone goes through romantic loss, so that’s not especially noteworthy. But when it happens for me, it pushes those old emotional buttons — and it picks that that original emotional wound — leaving me feeling questions that I dread having to feel.

Did this woman not really love me? Was I not good enough for her to want me? What’s wrong with me?

With the loss of women I’ve loved, I feel a fear that I caused the loss. Sometimes I really did; sometimes I didn’t. But when it comes to the animals I love, there are no such fears. I know I’ve done nothing wrong. I know they simply can’t live as long as I want them to.

That doesn’t stop me from feeling that irrational emotional button-pushing, though. When I know loss is coming, I’m terrified. As irrational as it is, I feel the need to find a way to save whatever dog or cat is dying.

But in a very real sense, what I really want is to save myself.

I want to save myself from the existential dread of loss. I want to overcome death. I want to show that I’m someone who is worth living for. That I’m someone worth loving.

I’m well aware that none of that makes sense. The rational part of my brain wants to stop this, but my heart is filled with old emotional programming that was deeply embedded when I was a tiny boy. And I’m feeling like a scared little boy tonight — at least in quiet ways in my heart.

I’ve lived with Lucy for 10 years now. She was several years old when she came to live with me. As much as I love her, I know she can’t live forever. I know there’s nothing I can do to stave off this natural and normal process.

My dogs and cats have given me the unconditional love that I wanted from my parents. I’ve done enough therapy and healing to know that. But knowing why they mean so much to me doesn’t stop a coming loss from filling my heart with deep existential dread that I can’t even explain.

I can’t change the past. I can’t rewrite my childhood or rescue the frightened child I was. But every goodbye teaches me something. Every loss reminds me that love was real — and that I didn’t deserve to be left.

Lucy can’t stay forever. None of them can. But tonight she’s lying here beside me, breathing softly, alive, loving me in the only language she ever needed.

When she goes, it will hurt. It should. The loss of love always leaves a bruise.

But I won’t be that abandoned little boy again. I won’t let loss convince me I’m unworthy.

I was loved. I am loved.

And that’s enough — even when it hurts.

Note: Lucy died just three days after this was published. After that initial report, I wrote a more detailed piece about her last painful night with me.