I keep wanting to talk about my dog

I bring up Skylar constantly. At dinner. On the phone with my mom. To the person sitting next to me on a flight who did not ask. I'll be mid-sentence about something completely unrelated and suddenly I'm telling a story about my dog who isn't here anymore.

For a while I felt weird about it. Like I was stuck. Like everyone around me had moved on from the subject and I was the only one still circling it. I'd catch myself starting a sentence about her and think — don't. They don't want to hear about this again.

But I couldn't stop. And eventually I realized I didn't want to.

Talking is how we keep them real

There's this fear that comes with losing someone — that the world is going to move on and forget they existed. That the space they took up will just close over like water. And when you stop talking about them, it starts to feel like that's happening. Like their absence is becoming permanent in a way their presence never will be.

Saying their name out loud is the simplest way to push back against that. Every time I tell someone about the time Skylar howled at the dishwasher or the way she'd lean her entire body weight into you when she wanted attention, she's real again for a second. She exists in someone else's head, even if they never met her. That matters to me more than I can explain.

People don't mind as much as you think

I was so convinced I was burdening people. That they were politely waiting for me to stop talking about my dead dog so we could discuss something normal.

But here's what actually happens: people lean in. They ask follow-up questions. They tell me about their own pets — the ones they have now and the ones they've lost. Almost every time I bring up Skylar, the other person has a story too. They were just waiting for permission to tell it.

Grief is lonely partly because we make it lonely. We assume nobody wants to sit with it. But most people will, if you let them.

Looking at photos went from impossible to necessary

The first week after Skylar died, I couldn't open my camera roll. I knew what was in there and I wasn't ready for it. Every photo felt like a door I wasn't strong enough to walk through.

Then one night I did. I was lying in bed and I just — needed to see her face. Not a memory of her face. Her actual face. The specific way her ears sat, the exact color of her eyes, that ridiculous expression she'd make when she wanted something and knew she wasn't supposed to have it.

I scrolled for two hours. I cried for most of it. But when I put my phone down, I felt better than I had in days. Not good. But lighter. Like I'd been holding something I didn't know I was holding, and looking at her let me set it down for a minute.

Now I look at her photos almost every day. Not because I'm wallowing. Because it helps. It connects me back to the version of my life where she was in it. And some days that connection is the only thing that gets me through.

The things that actually help are embarrassingly simple

I spent time looking for complicated answers. Grief books. Frameworks. Stages. And some of that was useful. But the things that actually move the needle are simpler than I wanted to admit:

Saying her name. Looking at her pictures. Telling someone a story about her. Letting myself feel it instead of performing "doing okay."

That's it. That's the whole list.

I think we overcomplicate grief because the simplicity of it feels too small for the size of the loss. Surely something this devastating requires a more sophisticated response than look at old photos and talk about them. But it doesn't. The loss is big. The medicine is small. And it works.

You're not stuck. You're remembering.

If you keep wanting to talk about your pet — if you find yourself bringing them up at odd moments, pulling up photos you've already looked at a hundred times, telling the same stories to anyone who will listen — you are not stuck. You are not broken. You are not making this harder than it needs to be.

You are doing the most natural thing in the world: you are refusing to let someone you loved disappear. And that is worth doing for as long as you need to.

Keep saying their name. Keep showing people their photo. Keep telling the stories. Not because it fixes anything. Because they deserve to be remembered out loud.

— Meagan, founder of RememberMyPet.ai