What I'm feeling

My thoughts are usually very well-structured, and so are my blog posts. This one won't be, because my thoughts and feelings are a bit all over the place.

Three days ago, our beautiful and precious dog, Ralph, was hit by a train while playing with one of his best dog friends, Mishka, and they both died. It was a horrible evening, and we are devastated. I know some of you won't be animal people and may not understand our grief, but we really have lost a huge part of our family, in a sudden and awful way.

We are grieving.

But I can't stay off social media. I can't stop checking the many supportive messages on Facebook and Twitter. And I also know I need to blog, so here I am. My online presence is so much a part of me (and this blog is a huge part of that) that I cannot process this all without doing so here.

So here's what I'm feeling

I'm feeling many things. I don't feel all of this all of the time, but I feel it all.

I feel devastated, shocked, sad, absolutely overwhelmed with sorrow at points. This shouldn't have happened. It doesn't make sense.

I feel confused. Why did it happen?

I feel emptiness. I can't get used to how quiet the house is, to not being woken up by him in the morning or having to put him outside last thing at night. There's something (someone) missing.

I feel closer to Mel that I probably ever have in our three and a bit years of marriage.

I feel it isn't real. If I'm honest, I don't think I believe yet that I'll never see him again. He's just gone away somewhere and he'll be back.

I feel totally overwhelmed and undone by the support, love and prayers of our friends, and especially of our church family at Gold Hill. Within 48 hours, our small group had rallied around, we had contact (a text, a tweet, a visit and a phone call) from each of the 4 pastors of the church, and we knew we had people to lean on. It was spectacularly moving for me.

I feel excited about the awards tomorrow night. This week has seen the highest traffic to my blog I've ever had. Messages of condolence were mixed on Tuesday and Wednesday with tweets, retweets and comments about posts. Which was an odd mix of emotions. But I'm still as excited at points as I was when I wrote on Monday.

I feel guilty for feeling excited about the awards tomorrow night. I should be sad, not happy. I should feel despair, not hope and excitement.

I feel numb a lot of the time.

I feel lucky to have shared these two and a bit years with such a wonderful, nosey, happy, friendly and enthusiastic-about-life dog. He taught me a lot.

I feel the need to say every couple of hours, in my head or out loud, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord." It's the only act of worship I've got in me right now.

I feel like keeping busy, but often can't focus on whatever I've decided to busy myself with.

I feel happy when I think about the many happy memories of Ralph we have. We spent last night with the couple who owned the other dog. We spent the evening telling stories and laughing. It was beautiful.

Then I feel sad afterwards.

I feel no better for having shared all of this, but know it will have helped.

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