Trigger Warning: Death and Mourning
My life is incredible. I go to an amazing school, have loving friends and family, and I have more than I could ever need or want. Just like everyone else, my life has been filled with incredibly happy events and incredibly sad events. One of those super sad things in my life is death. All four of my grandparents died before I turned 6, I lost my uncle to pancreatic cancer during high school, and during my second week of college, my first dog died.
Before Cosmo, I had only had hamsters and goldfish. After years of begging, my parents surprised my brother and I with a 7-year-old standard poodle at the beginning of my 7th grade year. My dog was the definition of an angel, bringing smiles to everyone’s faces when he begged for some of their food by placing his giant head on the kitchen table. I was only a few weeks into my first year at DePauw when my parents called to say that Cosmo got sick and passed in their arms on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. They tried to distract me by telling me that he went to a better place, that he was suffering, and that everything was going to be fine, but I didn’t want that. I couldn’t tell you what I wanted at that moment, because in all honesty, I had no idea what I wanted. I thought the world was going to end, that I was going to drop out of college because I was going to become depressed.
None of that ended up happening, but the weeks that followed his death were some of the most uncomfortable times I have ever experienced. I went into this sort of fog, like nothing mattered and I didn’t actually exist—it was as if I was in a dream. In class that next day, my vision was blurry. Every time someone spoke, it sounded like a muffle, like it was just a figment of my imagination. I felt as though I was thinking about absolutely everything and absolutely nothing all at the same time. This being my first dog, I had no idea how to react. So instead of coping how I normally do—eating comfort foods and sleeping until the end of time—I did the complete opposite; I stopped eating, I stopped sleeping, and I stopped doing any work. Every time I told someone what had happened—which I am still doing—they reply with “I’m so sorry” or “he’s in a better place” or something cheesy and stupid. What I’ve found is that I don’t care that you feel sorry for me. I don’t care about your opinion. All I want to hear is “it just sucks, doesn’t it?” After my best friend said that to me for the first time, I could only think,Yeah, it does just suck. There is no better way to put it. Because it’s true, death sucks. Loss sucks. Mourning sucks. When you are in that fog of not having the slightest idea of what to think or say or do, trying to be comforted is something that you want, but the ways in which people try only makes it feel wrong, and they ultimately screw it up. If at age 5, when my Mickey Mouse-loving grandfather passed, someone told me “it just stinks,” I think I probably would have felt the tiniest bit better.
After taking some time to myself, I found my place back in school. I ate regularly, I slept regularly, I did my work, and I started to genuinely smile again. It has been six months since I lost the best boy in all the world, and I still tear up trying to write this. Loss sucks, and mourning can last a long, long time. For me, it only took a few months to come to terms with this loss, but from experience, it can take years. It just sucks, but it will get better. If you ever feel like you can’t cope with loss or mourning, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.