Shortly after my last post, I learned we had to put my dear old doggy down. My Tracey who was my dog, my best friend, my companion, for 15.5 years. She died August 9, 2011. How do you say goodbye to your best friend? Oh god I struggled so much with that. The worst part about that was I felt like nobody understood. "Oh she's just a dog, get over it" is what I heard a lot. I felt very little support.
Tracey: April 7, 1996 - August 9, 2011
I struggled for a LONG time with Tracey's death, even though she was an old dog who had a good, spoiled long life. I felt like I lost my best friend, truly. I was 9 years old when we brought that 5 week old puppy home and I was 25 when I watched the vet give her that injection and watched her slip away from me. I would like to think I am more at peace with it now, but it still makes me tear up when I think about her.
Shortly after Tracey passed away, my boyfriend's grandmother passed in the fall of 2011, and that was obviously hard for everyone, so I was there trying to support his family as best as I could. And then, at Christmas time, I found out my grandmother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given about 3 months to live...... she ended up dying 5 weeks after her diagnosis.
My grandma's illness and diagnosis was one of the hardest things my family has gone through, not just because of my stubborn grandmother, but because the two sides of my family do not get along at all (my mom and her brother) so there was a lot of tension, a lot of anger, and a lot of tears. We all got together though for a final Christmas dinner that year and my Grandma died January 31st 2012. Despite my mom getting pretty much shafted in the end when it came to the will/money, all that family drama, hard for me contain my anger, etc. I try to remember my grandma fondly for how she treated me and not for all the horrible ways she treated my mom.
R.I.P. Grandma
Because my grandma died like four days before me and Greg's two year anniversary, we didn't have a great one, but we did go to Salt Spring Island for a couple of nights. The rest of my spring was spent working at SPH and then in May I moved to VGH into a part time line. I initially liked it there but later became depressed because of some bullying that was going on. We went to a wedding that summer, and the rest of it was spent working. We also moved in together into a not very great place that was really too small.
And then one day in September I got the shock of a lifetime....
My dear friend, Leah, whom I had known since 2005, and had lived with at one point, died very suddenly and unexpectedly in downtown Vancouver. I will not go into details of her death as they are still unclear, but paramedics could not save her.
I remember just bawling to the point where I didn't know I could cry that hard. How could this happen? Anyone but Leah, she has to be okay right? I truly went through all the stages of grief I had learned about in nursing school. The biggest one I went through was anger. I was angry at everyone, angry at the world, angry at Facebook reading everyone's timelines and watching everyone be happy and thinking "How can life keep going on when this sweet angel was taken so suddenly?" I got so bad I had to take a stress leave from work and go into counselling. I read books, got put on medication, etc. I turned to friends for support. Some of them were there for me, others were not. The ones who were there, I am grateful for. The ones who were not, I mostly don't talk to now, and one of them cut me out of her life completely because she couldn't handle my "negativity" (it's called grief sweetie, but thanks for leaving me when I needed you most). I learned a lot through Leah's death, like how people seem to think that grief just goes away after a certain period of time, or how I must not think about Leah anymore because I'm smiling and working and going on with my life. Truth is, I will never stop thinking about her, she was one of my closest friends and I still struggle with this huge loss.
I truly hope you have found your peace, my dear friend. Love you forever and always. <3
More updates later.
