When we adopted Darcy I was not in a good place. I was deeply depressed. I was anxious. My life was stagnate. He helped lift me. He was my constant. This little dog barely left my side. For whatever reason he chose me to follow. He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself.

Darcy was adopted from a shelter. My sister and I convinced our Mum to let us get another dog after seeing one advertised in the local newspaper. That particular dog was taken but instead my Mum and sister came home with Darcy.

He wasn’t a young dog, middle aged you might say and he had lived a sad life. He was surrendered to the shelter by an elderly couple that didn’t or couldn’t look after him and later surrendered again by a young couple that didn’t want him. I think it had to do with the fact he had severe allergies. He would be fine and then suddenly it would hit and he would scratch and bite for days on end. He suffered so much but he was so brave. As frustrating as this biting and scratching could be I could never of loved him any less.

Darcy slept on my bed. He sat with me and kept me company when I was sad. He made life bearable. I could hug his soft furry body, this little Shih-Tzu, with a playful nature and forget for even a brief moment my troubles. Darcy would look up at me like I was someone important, just stare up watching my every move, it would melt my heart.

When I moved out it broke me to leave him with my parents. I did. I regret it more now than ever. I feel like I deserted him. He loved me so much. If I could go back to that time I would never have done. I would have convinced my Mother to let me take him. I would have found a rental property that let me have dogs. I guess I had no concept of how little time I really had left with him.

One day he started limping. It seemed to start from nowhere. We thought he had arthritis, he was getting old after all. The vet agreed. However, not long after that diagnosis my Mum found a lump. He had a scan and it was cancer. Fucking cancer. It was an aggressive form. The vet discussed removing his leg. Mum didn’t want this because he was already old and small she didn’t think he could be mobile after the operation. Nor did she want him to have chemotherapy and have his quality of life ruined. She made her choice. My instinct was to do anything and everything but it was not my choice to make.

Darcy became less active over time but he still loved food more than ever. He would even try and play with my sister’s dog Dexter as he had always done. Up until the last time I saw him he wanted to play with his stuffed toy and eat as much as he could. He had grown tired one could see and could not get around so well but I did not expect that he would not be there on my return two weeks later.

Darcy was put down, euthanased, whatever. There were reasons I am sure. I know it is selfish to want to keep something/someone alive because you cannot let go. However, I am not a noble person. I do not want to feel loss or pain. I do not want to experience separation. I want to have my dog, alive. If you could feel my despair when I realised he was missing… well you could only then fully understand what this dog meant to me.

In honour of Darcy, I hope you can find it in your heart to adopt your next pet. Why not give your home and your love to an animal that needs it? Don’t support puppy mills and backyard breeders. Support those animals that are abandoned and need a home.

Farewell Darcy. I love you. I miss you.

You want to know what gut wrenching misery feels like? Wait until you feel the loss of someone/something you love. For those that have experienced it, you know this is a feeling that will not simply dissipate with a bottle of rum. It takes years. Years of well practiced abolition of painful memories. Sometimes the only way to move forward is to forget. But how do you bring yourself to forget something you love? Time too can make the burden lighter. However, past loss will simply be replaced with the punishing nature of fresh absence and gut wrenching anxiety. Anxiety that will ooze from the crevasses of your broken heart. You will feel things you never felt possible and you will feel them again and again because love lost is punishing. It is so punishing it can break even the strongest of us. What hope is there for the weak? Where do we turn?

Currently, I cannot help but cast my mind forward. I keep thinking about the torture that awaits me. Will I be able to withstand hit after hit? I don’t know that I want to.

I would reunite loved ones and allow them one last embrace, a kiss and a whispered word of love.

I dwell though… and dwell and dwell some more. If there were a competition for dwelling I’d win. Even this writing is an example of me dwelling. See, can’t stop.

The CliffsNotes of my dwelling is that love is stronger than sense. Consequently, love remains at war with sense. Things aren’t pretty. There are casualties like trust and confidence. Can they be rebuilt, maybe? However, things can’t ever be the same. There will always be that creeping feeling that betrayal is just around the corner.

Subsisting on fear of betrayal is like sucking down water instead of air. It is going to ruin you eventually, it will choke you, leave you struggling to live, whether the betrayal is realised or not.

You can’t miss something you’ve never had. However, if you happen to have had it and lost it, well the memory of it will eat you alive.

“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

-Margery Williams Bianco ( The Velveteen Rabbit).

This book was possibly the very reason I as a child had an extreme physical attachment to material objects. The child loved his toy rabbit so much he made it come to life through sheer will.

I always considered my toys valuable objects. Where other children cast aside toy after toy I would not allow my Mother to throw even one away. I remember losing a small stuffed pony in a shopping centre and I was completely devastated. So much so that the feeling of distress is still etched in my mind. The panic of losing something I possessed, material though it was, made me completely crazy. It was replaced straight away with a small Cabbage Patch Doll figurine, but this was not equal to what I lost. The guilt of losing that toy could not be easily dissolved.

Now, as I revisit The Velveteen Rabbit, I realise how much I loved this story and how important the message was. A boy has a single toy that he puts all his love into. When he contracts scarlet fever the adults insist the toy must be burnt so as not to carry the infection. The rabbit is sadly cast aside in what is perhaps the lowest part of the story but is later saved!

He becomes real, real because he was once so loved by this child. That love carries through the story to the very end where despite the boy having moved on from his old toy rabbit, he doesn’t forget him. This is cemented in the story when he glimpses who he thinks is his old velveteen rabbit roaming freely in the wild.

It is such a lovely story in that it shows that no matter how old we get, the things we care for and  that sense of imagination and youth are always with us. This is despite developmental transition and life changes.

I loved this book so much I bought it for Sophie, my partner’s niece when she was born. I only hope she grows to love this story also.