06/05/2026
A week ago I lost my friend.
The guy who had coffee with me every morning. Who took slow walks around the yard just because I needed to move. The one I told my frustrations to, my small joys, my ugliest thoughts. He held space for me without once making me feel like too much.
The worst part? He wasn't human. So many people can't sympathize. They see "pet loss" as something smaller.
But let me put this in biological terms.
Your brain can't tell the difference between losing a human best friend and losing a companion animal. The same neural circuits fire — the anterior cingulate cortex, the insula. The same oxytocin bond we built over coffee and quiet walks is neurologically real.
Right now my body is in grief mode: fragmented sleep, no appetite, brain fog, my nervous system stuck on high alert. My immune system is suppressed — people actually get sick more often in the first month after a loss like this.
And because society doesn't hand out bereavement leave for a dog or cat, because there's no funeral or cards in the mail, I'm supposed to act like he was just an animal. That mismatch — feeling everything while being pushed to move on — is called disenfranchised grief. Studies show it actually makes the pain last longer.
So no, he wasn't human. But he was my best friend. And my body doesn't care about species. It only knows I lost a being I loved at coffee time, in the yard, in the quiet moments when he just sat next to me and held everything I couldn't say.
His name was Thor Hammer Keaton... And I miss him like a fish on the beach misses the water.
Leave a ❤️ if you relate to this
