Making Space for Absence

(gentle music) Headspace Studio. (gentle music) Hey, friends, it's Rosie here. Welcome back to "Radio Headspace." If you've ever lost a pet, you know what it's like to sense their absence. I love animals, I always have, and recently, we lost one of our pitties. He was getting up there in age, his health was ailing, and we knew it was a matter of time. Lately, I've been walking through the house or reaching for something or opening a door, and for a split second, I expect to see him, Bub, Bubba, Bubbanator whatever name we were calling him that day, and then I remember he's not here. It's strange how grief shows up like that. It's not big and obvious in moments, although those come too. It's in those unexpected ones, the in-between ones, the moments where your body still expects a rhythm that no longer exists. I'll still catch myself listening to his little footsteps, still glance towards his favorite spot and seeing all 92 pounds of him pooled in his memory foam mattress. I still pause at feeding time like something is missing from the sequence, because it is. Losing an animal companion doesn't feel peripheral. It feels woven. They're part of your day in ways you don't even register until they're gone. The morning routine shifts, the house sounds different, the small interactions you never documented suddenly feel like the entire story. There's a kind of companionship animals offer that is hard to explain unless you've experienced it. They don't ask you to be anything you're not. They don't need you to explain yourself. They just show up constantly. They show up in the same way over and over again, asking only that you be there too, and then one day, they're not. (gentle music continues) I've been thinking about how we measure grief. There's an unspoken hierarchy sometimes, as if certain losses are supposed to matter more than others, and if grief needs to justify itself to be valid. But the body doesn't work that way. The body responds to attachment and love does not measure in species. The absence I feel with Bubby isn't something I can scale or compare. It's not something I can neatly categorize. It's just there. It shows up in the spaces he used to fill, and mindfulness has been helping me meet it differently. I'm not trying to minimize it or I'm not trying to rush too quickly to move on. It's allowing my grief to appear in the exact form it takes. Some days, it's a soft ache. Other days, it's a sudden wave that arises out of nowhere. Sometimes, it's just a quiet noticing, the empty space where his bed used to be, the absence of his weight leaning against my leg. Instead of pushing those moments away, I've been trying to let them exist, just acknowledging them. Grief doesn't always need a story. It doesn't need to be processed in a linear way. Sometimes it just...