It's true. I talk to my dead dog. Watching TV. Cooking dinner. Driving in the car, walking through the park, sitting on the deck under my umbrella while having a cocktail. I talk to Cooper.
No, he does not respond. I have not gone that far off the rails. Yet.
This past week I watched Hannah, Gabe and Annie's dog, and several times I called Hannah "Cooper" as in "wasn't that a great sunset, Cooper" while Hannah looked at me askance.
I realize that having Cooper die after living with me for 15 years means a little cognitive dissonance is appropriate on my part. I get that. It's not that I am delusional about his death. It's simply that I lived with that dog for a long time and now that he's gone, he's still my trusty Pony-Pal-Pokey. (If you don't get that reference, well, too bad.) So I still talk out loud to him, I address comments to him and in some odd way, it is comforting.
When creatures you love die, whether they are human or animal, there seems to be a resistance to letting them go. Not so much for old parents, but for peers who die too young or really good friends who die and of course, for pets. We know our old parents need to die, so we welcome (in a way) their demise. But friends and pets, not so much. How surprising is it then, once they are gone, that we continue to converse with them? Not surprising at all, at least to me.
With my pets, I simply talk to them, make comments that they would understand and, in the end, I simply wish they were still in the room with me. How cool would it be if my great dog Webber, the large, goofy Golden Retriever, had been friends with the small, stellar dog Cooper? What fun they would have had.
I will continue to talk to my dead dog Cooper and my previously dead dog Webber and all the dead people I loved and have known. If they listen, great. If not, also great. In the end, it's all good.
