My world in a box
Grief is such a funny thing. One day, you almost feel back to your normal then in a breath, it kicks you in the gut again, perhaps brought on from seeing a picture, hearing a song, smelling a scent. Whatever triggered it, it doesn’t matter really because now all you want to do is curl into a ball and cry. At least..that’s how I feel. What brought on my bout was a facebook memory, a picture. It’s been almost a year since he’s been gone. This he being my little shih tzu, my best little buddy, Gunner. To know Gunner was to love him. He was my baby. He came into my life at a point in time I thought I was lost. I had just lost my child, a miscarriage, my fourth and I had decided I was done trying. I couldn’t take any more. I was living in a city I hated, with a man that I grew to detest with every fiber of my being as he was a cheat and a liar. I was worn down and felt like I had no worth. Then, I decided to get a puppy. I scoured the local classifieds until I found what I was looking for. A litter of shih tzu puppies of age to be going to their new homes and the breeder was not charging an arm and a leg for. I called the number and that night we went to see the puppies. After spending time with them all there were two that stood out to me, one was mostly white and was the tiniest of them all. The other was a beautiful mahogany color with black tips. He would run up to me, poke my knee with his nose then run off again to play with his siblings. That alone made my decision, he was a confident independent puppy. I brought my boy home that night. Oddly enough, I wasn’t the one to name him though. We went to visit the in laws, they had a corgi. My father in law was highly amused by Gunner’s long tail where his dog had none. I should also note we are a military family as well, so he was waving Gunner’s tail back and forth and laughed saying “Look he’s a little tailgunner!” and thus that is how Gunner’s name came to be.