The Emotional Roller Coaster of NYE

NYE – a time for people to come together and reflect on the past year while making resolutions for the fresh new year ahead but sometimes it can be emotionally exhausting for some (especially those overly empathetic or sensitive like I am!).

Needless to say the last few months have been a surreal experience – Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s… where this year the memories will be different, despite my best efforts to remain inside the comfort of habit of the holidays come and gone I am forced to accept change and must endure the vacuum inside my heart … suffering in waves the sorrow and loss of my heart and soul – Maggie Mae.

I did know know what a “heart pet” was until I started working in the veterinary field — for those of you not familiar with the term a “heart pet” is something of a “soul mate” (but for four legs not two!) and simply a term that has coined an animal that has left such a profound effect on your life in ways you never thought imaginable.

Now, I get e-mails all of the time, “but Suzi what about the rest of the land of adorable misfits at your house?”

I love every single one of my “adorable misfits” and they enrich my life and fill my heart with love that overflows but they aren’t Maggie.

Maggie who was there when I turned 18 years old – so confident that since I was officially an “adult” (insert giggles here) and knew everything there was to know about “adulting” (again insert giggles here).

Maggie who was there when I moved into my first house – who we huddled together on the nights the old furnace didn’t keep us completely warm, or the summer days that were too hot but despite that Maggie always needed to be touching me (or on those real hot days “peel” was a more correct term).

Maggie who was there when I turned 21. Who was there when I experienced my first major break-up, Maggie who gave us the strength to uproot and leave a toxic, abusive relationship.

Maggie who was there when I got married. Who was there when I turned 30.

For every photo with Santa (and the Easter bunny!), for every halloween costume, every St. Patrick’s day we dyed her green (non-toxic of course!), for every Christmas that we carefully laid her stocking out to be filled with gifts and snacks or every New Years Eve that Maggie was the first kiss of the New Year.

You get comfortable — they are there for all of the milestones and in your mind and heart you convince yourself they will always be there.

Until one day they are not.

And then you feel like you are lost and standing in the middle of an open field and it is just a whirlwind of emotions.

And for every storm there comes a rainbow! For as much as I was mourn and miss my holiday traditions with Maggie Mae … I am starting brand new traditions with Maxwell.

Happy New Year Friends! Just like all of you I am sure that 2021 was full of highs and lows, dips, stomach dropping adventures — but we made it! Here is to hoping we all have a happy, healthy & prosperous new year!

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Dear Maggie,

Saturday. 02/27/2021 10:46am

It’s a grey, dreary, rainy, bleak day. The fluorescent lights of the local laundromat sit harsh and heavy on my hazel eyes as I watch the dryer tumble my bedspread over & over, I became entranced by the light hum the dryer was making and the monotony of its assignment at hand.

And for a moment I feel “normal” again, whole if you will but in the blink of an eye that moments gone and passed and my mind brutally taunts me…that for the first time in 14 years I am all alone, you are gone and now I am trying to remember my life before you blessed it, how I functioned, how I made it through my days but honestly — I can’t.

As much as I sift and comb through the complexities and anxieties of my mind, I cannot even pretend to remember a time before you because honestly that time never mattered.

Fourteen years seems like such a long time until you’re living without your “shadow” , your best friend, — your soul mate… then it starts to feel like a tiny drop in the ocean if you blink you miss it. And it’s true fourteen years was not at all long enough and here I am craving and yearning for more seconds, more minutes — as if trying to barter with the cruel universe that stole you from my life.

They say losing your “heart” pet changes you and that you are not the same after that. You convince yourself that won’t be you, but it will be. This is a pain that everyone takes on when they fall in love with their “soul” pet that amplifies every minute you further fall in love with them by the time you are at that horrible fateful goodbye the pain is so ungodly unfathomable it teeters on physical pain.

I teeter in and out of denial that you are actually gone and are resting comfortably among the stars (I would say quietly also but given your sweet, adorable, lumberjack snores I retract the “quiet” statement!) because some days my mind plays tricks on me – eagerly anticipating you to come bouncing from around the doorway with your ears flopping up and down like tiny velvet pig-tails and your little curly tail tightly curled resting on top of you like a bun.

Maggie Mae there will never be enough words, enough ways to explain or describe how much I miss you. WE miss you. The house feels like a vacuum with you absent from it, a repair not easily fixed. I miss you sorely but know that as long as I continue to talk about you, educate & advocate AGAINST horrible places and practices of “businesses” such as “harbor pets”, “petLand” and the “backyard breeders” they do business with…then I know you are never too far from my heart and soul. Love you my sweet girl.

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