Max, Maggie May, Hannah ...

So, my parents are moving to Virginia. Even from 600 miles away, the thought is still pretty overwhelming, so I'm going to focus on one aspect of it, because that's about all I can handle.

I spent the majority of my 'remembered' life with three animals, Max, Maggie May, and Hannah. They're buried between two smaller trees in the backyard, covered in a blanket of ivy. When my parents leave ... the animals won't. They'll still be there. Some other family will move in, and never know they're there. They'll never know the spot in the office where I laid with Maggie and talked to her softly as her heart stopped beating, or the place in the backyard where Max had his first seizure, or how Hannah always had that air of dignity about her and purred "like the indy 500". They won't know where we found Maggie in the basement, or how she and Hannah used to pry the legs off of the crickets, or where Moomie's body laid and I cried over him and begged him to breathe again. They won't know, and our animals will be without any of us for the first time in 20 years. I feel like they're being abandoned, and I won't even be able to say goodbye.

Is it silly that I'm so wrecked over this? After all, the last of them died over three years ago. I'm 22, shouldn't I be able to accept moving on a little more gracefully?

If there is such a thing as an animal afterlife, surely they'd understand, and they wouldn't feel abandoned, because they're not there, and they'd know how much I still love them. If there isn't, if this life is all there is for our pets, if they're these soulless little things, well, then there's nothing to say goodbye to, because they were gone the moment they died. Bones can't care. So either way ... I ... I shouldn't feel this bad. But I do. We may have moved a lot, but we always had them. (As far as my memory stretches, really) It won't be where Max, Maggie and Hannah are when we're gone, it'll just be a patch of ivy covered earth. If animals don't have souls, they might as well have never existed. Maybe that's why this is so hard for me. It feels so unfair that God could even give us a capacity to love something so intensely that is strictly temporary. Cruel, even. But then, our pets have never been just pets to me. They've been companions, friends, listeners, and the closest things I had to siblings. I grew up with them, and they grew up with me. Surely, an animal wouldn't just come running when you cried because it was a parlor trick. Surely there's got to be more than just skin and bones. Because if there isn't...I feel terrible leaving behind bones to be forgotten, bones that once held animals that loved me, too.

Hug your furries a little extra tight for me, if you would.


*edit: As Matt pointed out, I incorrectly listed my age as 23, when I am, in fact, 22. Urk*