A whole different kind of grief

Losing Emmett has engendered a kind of grief I hadn't experienced before, human or animal. I wanted to keep my thoughts on this experience separate from my short biography of Emmett. I have been so surprised at how much more private and pervasive the sadness has been that Emmett is gone. Numbers of good friends have expressed their sympathy over Emmett's death, and I really haven't much wanted to talk about it, unlike past periods. It seems this time that what I've lost is more essential, like my sense of smell or something. I expect Emmett's real presence at every turn, and losing him has meant realizing the hundreds of ways in which he was enmeshed in my daily life. When I walk down the stairs, turn the key in the door or open the garden gate, I expect the sound of his collar. When I fix a meal, I still think of breaking the extra egg for him, of giving him my leftover milk in the morning, of how he'll like the salmon skin. Chloe occasionally plays with a squeaky toy of his, and I simply think he's there. Nights seem so very quiet without his occasional scratching or shifting. I've even been unable to vacuum up his little patches of hair here and there. It's a truly confounding loss, and I've also found myself indulging in far more denial, willfully even; I've come to see that denial isn't necessarily evil, but a happy respite. I have friends who are not dog people, and it's somehow easier around them, their expressions more general. I see it on the faces of my dog-loving friends, though, their sudden fear at losing their own dog one day, their expansive wanting to talk about it, and I can't, though most people know me to be voluble. Facing them makes me have to face the loss. I find only the quietest moments in which to let the sorrow flow. Oddly, the person you believe yourself to be escapes you in moments of surprise and shock.
I'm off to France tomorrow, almost a month of full-blown denial ahead.