Geoffrey Johnstone is the pastor of the Seymour Baptist Church.
My dog, Billy, passed away on September 6 in 2022. He was only eight years old.
It happened so quickly. In hindsight I should have seen it coming. The week before, he woke me at 2am, whimpering.
A few days later he collapsed in the backyard and I rushed him to our local vet. What started out as a possible case of pancreatitis turned into liver cancer.
It was the first time in my life that I experienced overwhelming grief.
Billy came into our lives when my wife was first diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. A friend encouraged me to buy a dog.
“Cuddling a pet will help with the pain,” she said.
I can still remember the day I fell in love with our West Highland terrier. Elizabeth was having a bad day and her meds were not kicking in fast enough.
Billy jumped on to the couch alongside her and placed his chin on her knee. He lay there, very still, for a long time.
The French philosopher Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said that grief helps fill in the emptiness left by someone you once loved.
However, it does not always fill it in completely.
I remember Billy every time I open my front door.
That’s where he used to wait for me. He always made me feel like I was the most important person in the world.
C.S. Lewis, who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, lost his wife to cancer. When he wrote about his loss he said the difference between fear and grief was paper thin.
There is a sentence I use at funeral services. It is one I think mourners need to hear. This is what I said the first time I used it.
I can see it in your faces and by the tears in your eyes that you loved your mum.
But that is not why you are here.
You are here because your mum loved you.
You are the reason she got out of bed every morning.
You are the reason her life had meaning and purpose.
So … no regrets. Do not be afraid.
Just know this … you were loved.
Very few people escape grief. What has helped me is the knowledge that I am not broken. I do not need someone to fix me. It simply means that I was blessed by a little dog that loved me.