a girl’s first true friend.

Hampton’s health declined faster than I was ready for. Even while he was still here, I felt myself beginning to grieve him. I learned there was a name for it — anticipatory grief — though having language for it didn’t make it any lighter.

One afternoon while he stayed with me at my apartment, I sat outside with him and let him smell the wind. I didn’t rush him or distract myself. I just stayed. It reminded me that resilience doesn’t always look like strength or optimism or “holding it together.” Sometimes resilience looks like sitting with what hurts and choosing to love anyway.

That day, I wrote a short poem:

If love could hold time still,
I’d never let the clock move.
But even in the letting go,
love refuses to leave.

A few months later, Hampton passed away. Writing that still feels unreal. I knew it was coming, but nothing prepares you for the moment it actually happens. I think back to all the moments I held him and told him thank you — for loving me through every season of my life.

What surprised me most was how heartbreak and peace showed up together. Peace, because he wasn’t suffering anymore. Heartbreak, because he wasn’t beside me anymore. I didn’t have many words that night — just a heavy gratitude and an emptiness I didn’t yet know how to hold.

In the days that followed, everything felt quiet and off. I kept looking for him without meaning to — listening for sounds that weren’t coming anymore. At the same time, I felt a small, unfamiliar spark inside me. Like this season, as painful as it is, might be shaping me into someone new. The idea of change — of moving, of choosing a different life — didn’t feel as terrifying as it once had. Loss has a way of rearranging what matters and what doesn’t.

I keep returning to this quote: “Grief is love with nowhere to go.”
Maybe that’s true. But I also believe that over time, love finds new places.

I keep thinking he went too soon. Why does cancer take a six-year-old dog? He was nothing but good. How is that fair? Saying it was “too soon” feels like saying, wait — I still had more love to give him. And I did.

I try not to dwell, reminding myself that he isn’t suffering now. Still, our family feels heavy. My dog and my stepdad received their diagnoses around the same time, and watching illness take one family member makes you fear what else it might take. Grief doesn’t exist in isolation — it echoes.

I’ve felt angry with God. I don’t understand, and I don’t want a Jesus Band-Aid slapped onto my pain. I don’t want to hear “God has a plan.” I’m sure He does, but I’ve been trying to survive that plan for the last year. I’m tired of being sad. My family doesn’t deserve this constant cycle of loss.

Hampton was my first dog — a girl’s first true friend — and six years was far too short a lifetime for a soul as gentle as his. He was protective and sweet, loving his people with a loyalty that felt louder than words. I’m grateful we shared one last holiday with him at our table, and for every quiet, ordinary moment that came before it.

He held our family through grief, catching our tears during my grandmother’s passing — steady and soft in the ways only he could be. If you’ve known me at any point, you’ve known Hampton, because he was woven into every season of my life. He taught me what unconditional, earthly love really looks like, and he walked beside me through some of my darkest years.

Because of him, our family grew closer. Our home felt warmer. We learned a kind of love that can’t be duplicated — the kind that leaves an imprint on your heart forever.

I don’t want to tell the world my whole story, but the truth is Hampton helped me through days when I didn’t want to keep being alive anymore. I am better now — through help, therapy, and God alone — but it breaks my heart knowing I couldn’t protect him the way he protected me. After all he did for me, there was nothing I could do to save him.

I don’t know who I would be without him. I only know that loving him changed me — and even now, in his absence, that love hasn’t left.