YOU HAVE RECORDED EVERY SOUND, the tap of her feet on your wood floors, the small sound of her breathing, the contentment she makes audible as she sits by you, or as she sleeps, happy at the mere fact you are there, and for no other reason. She celebrates your very coming and going, because it is her place in life. And she suspects you like it.

So we earn this right to grieve their loss. We have paid long and dearly for the pain we suffer, and the memory that rushes forward, the memory that misses nothing, that recalls every small event. It is a return on an investment that love cannot help but make. And all this for a dog? Absolutely. According to Harvard professor, Marjorie Garber, Dog love is love. It is not something less, because love is one thing and not another. The dimensions are just as deep, just as immeasurable. So does it hurt? Yes, it hurts. Like few things do. Not that I need a Shakespearean Scholar to tell me that, but it does validate something I found out for myself a long time ago.

Isabelle, the dog in the picture above, belonged to some close friends of ours. They now grieve her loss. And the loss is real, penetrating, the tears, the deep groan, the blind voiceless thing that sticks in the throat, the pain as deep as the investments made.

We grieve with our friends. We have been there. And it can’t be helped. It shouldn’t be helped. Love that authentic, that effervescent and selfless deserves this time, this odd and necessary celebration. That’s right, a celebration. I would give it no other word. And I’m not sure the dog would either. Celebration is how they lived. It’s how they should be remembered. Love gives us little choice. Like John Grogan said of Marley “. . . there was no shame in admitting a real, piercing grief for something as seemingly inconsequential as an old, smelly dog.”

Goodbye, Isabelle. And “Smelly” was his word, not mine.