Every Night Was Goodbye

Three days before Christmas, Cassidy died.

The morning after, I woke up early out of habit. I walked to the kitchen to make coffee, as I always do. The house was quiet. The coffee machine hummed. I stood there waiting, and for the first time in fifteen years, there was no shadow by my feet, looking up at me expectantly.

Every morning she would get up with me. She used to follow me everywhere, especially if she thought food might be involved. Eating was her lifelong obsession, a side effect of medication we often joked had preserved her from the inside. She was a foster failure. We were only meant to take care of her for a few days. Those few days became a lifetime.

As a puppy, barely larger than my hand, she would chase dogs three times her size, nip at their tails, then retreat under the couch, plotting her next move, pouncing again when the opportunity presented itself. She never lost that sass. Even in old age, with bowed legs and a stubborn limp, she patrolled the house, keeping everyone in line and remaining vigilant in the event that gravity blessed her with a falling snack.

That morning, the silence felt enormous.

Her final week was swift. She had a seizure on a Thursday and was diagnosed shortly after with a nasal tumour pressing into her brain. She deteriorated rapidly, having two more seizures in the space of days. By the following weekend, we made the decision no one wants to make.

The room was heavy with love and acceptance. Despite the discomfort she surely felt, she was happy, surrounded by her family. I have long reflected on mortality; I am not shocked by death. But I still had to hold myself steady for her. Due to her chronic disease, she did not handle stress well. Even in her final moments, I didn’t want my emotions to become her burden.

At one point I tried to lift her up from her pacing to carry her to her bed. She nipped at me — indignant, as always. She had never liked being picked up. I smiled through the sting. I deserved that. So instead, I did what she always tolerated best. I stroked her gently and whispered into her ear that I loved her, my Baby Love, with all my heart, until the moment she passed.

Only then did I let myself break.

Her whole life had been a lesson in quiet resilience. She had Addison’s disease. Later, pancreatic insufficiency. She survived on a cocktail of medication that should have shortened her days, yet somehow extended them. She lived with discomfort and yet carried a zest for life that still humbles me. She taught me patience. She taught me calm.

Once, during an argument Lenja and I regretfully let escalate, she disappeared. We found her trembling in another room, overwhelmed by the noise and tense energy. That moment reshaped something in me. I did not want to be someone who brings chaos into a room. I wanted to be someone who steadies it.

Her final lesson was no different.

Every night for years, I kissed her goodnight and said goodbye. Every morning I woke up to her as if it were a gift. I knew — intellectually — that one day she would not be there.

Still, when the day came, it hurt. I am not surprised. Death does not discriminate. It does not negotiate. It arrives on its own terms.

After each loss in my life, I return to Seneca’s letter On Grief. One line has stayed with me through the years:

“You have buried one whom you loved; look about for someone to love.”

The morning after Cassidy died, I lay in bed longer with my wife. I held her. I smothered my other dog with affection. Grief, held too tightly, calcifies. Grief transformed into love expands.

There is always someone to love.

I theme my years. This year, I will honour her through Resilience. Not the brittle kind that suppresses emotion. Not the kind that pretends not to feel. Resilience, to me, means feeling everything and acting anyway. This year will bring flux, turbulence, uncertainty. It already has. I wish I were entering it with her shadow trailing behind me. I am not.

But perhaps that is the point. Every challenge is an opportunity to embody the virtues we claim to value. Patience. Calm. Perseverance. Resilience. Cassidy lived those virtues quietly, without ever naming them.

If I can carry even a fraction of her resilient spirit into the year ahead — if I can meet hardship with steadiness and love fiercely while I have the chance — then her legacy lives on.

So, dear reader, if you have lost someone you love, may your grief soften you rather than harden you. Honour their memory.

And look about for someone to love.

Until next time,

Ric.