2023 has been a difficult year. In time, I will look back on this year with the pain of loss, the emptiness of longing and the darkness of heartbreak. Bad times befall every year of life, but those times are usually tempered with the good. Not 2023.

I was born the sixth of seven children, so I have never known life without family. Strong, bonded family. Growing up with my sisters was all the insurance I needed to make it to adulthood. With emotional ties as strong and defined as our blood ties, even through adulthood, the awareness of the value we hold for one another was palpable. For each one of us there is a feeling of “we is me, me is we.”

There is no greater challenge to that belief that the passing of one of us. Throughout her illness, we were aware of her condition, whether we wanted to know it , or not. She was a part of our everyday lives, even if we didn’t see her or speak to her everyday. She was still there, in our consciousness. Even now, More than a month since she died, she is still a part of my consciousness. I won’t see her again in this lifetime, but she will continue to have a place in my life.

There is the family I was born into, then there is the family I made. People with whom I found a bond that grew far beyond friendship. Relationships that defy description except to call them family in quotation marks. My birth family is large by any measure, the family I assembled is small, also by any measure. My dogs have always made the grade. Very few humans. And I recently lost one.

She was, is, the dearest member of my created family. I carried her closer in my heart than any other human. We had been on a shared path for 40 years. There is no one I shared more of who I was, and am, with. Her situation in life was such that to keep her close, I had to be willing to open up and allow her the freedom to roam without restraint.

She was diagnosed as bi-polar many years ago. She struggled against it as hard as she struggled with it. It was perhaps the mental illness that gave her a quirky charisma before a diagnosis, but perhaps it wasn’t. I don’t know, but I do know, her inner world changed as drastically as her day-to-day behavior. The only signs she had to measure the change was how others described it for her. The quiet in her ceased to exist. Her commitment to anything became about what she could handle at the time, there was no depending on tomorrow. And then was no tomorrow.

As I have said, my homemade family consisted of a few humans, and dogs. Many dogs. Each one of them brought specific gifts to my life. Some of those gifts are more enduring than others, but all were equally valuable in their own space and time. Every one of them awakened a different part of my heart and taught me something about myself.

I lost two of my good bois just months apart. My best boi, the best friend I had ever known passed away from a long-diagnosed heart condition. In the nine months since his death, I still haven’t come to complete terms of his affect on me and my life. Every once in a while, he will cross my mind in such a way to give me pause. I will have discovered another thing, another part of myself I have lost because he is not here with me.

His brother followed him in death just four months later. I love him dearly, but he was never really my dog. He belonged to, and with, his brother. My little guy came to me frightened and anxious. I gave him space to be the dog he wanted to be. He just wanted his brother. Their relationship gave him the home he never knew. When my best boi passed, I was very concerned how well his little brother would adapt to the change. I wasn’t surprised when he couldn’t really see his way forward. I will forever miss that sweet, docile creature.

2023 is coming to an end. But its not over. It will never be over. Four large pieces of my heart will remain, imprisoned in the losses. But the parts of my heart lost will be replaced by the hearts of my loved ones. To survive, thrive, and carry on their memories are the true testament to our enduring love and devotion.