It’s been three months since we lost Lili and the pain still lingers. I see her everywhere, I expect her to be everywhere. I still sleep with her blanket on the end of my bed, I still have her bed out in the living room. I still wake up thinking I need to walk her. And Ren, our other dog, still misses her. I can tell in the way she mopes around sometimes, the way she nudges Lili’s bed, the way she’ll curl up on Lili’s blanket every night. There’s a hole in our lives, and it will never be filled.

The days go by. They go swiftly. Spring moves into summer, summer starts to wane, the hole in my heart persists. It’s gone from searing pain to dull ache, but it’s there, will always be there, that place where I miss Lili.

We have her ashes, we have a small plaque on which her footprint rests. We have twelve years of memories: walks in the forest, running through dog parks, snuggling on the couch, sleeping with her head resting on Ren’s back. And I have this hole in my heart that will exist forever, a constant reminder that once I had something pure, a love so unconditional as to be overwhelming, and it’s gone, gone forever.

I think about getting another dog, a companion for Ren, a stopgap for me. I go as far as looking online at petfinder, I go as far as checking off boxes as to what I would like in a dog (small, older, trained, loves other dogs), and then I close the tab in a flourish of guilt and remorse, as if Lili can see me searching for a replacement.

But it’s not. It’s not a replacement. It wouldn’t because nothing can replace Lili, nothing can bring back that crooked smile, that contended sigh when she settled in on her blanket for the night. It would just be a stick for a dam, a futile way of keeping the waters out.

I’ve been better at dealing with human deaths than I have with the death of my dog. My grandparents, coworkers, my brother-in-law; I dealt with each of their deaths swiftly and matter of factly, coming to terms with the facts that I would never see them again, tucking away my emotions in some far off place in my brain so I never had to deal with them. But Lili’s death was different, maybe because I was there to see her take her last breath, because I held her as she died, because she loved me unconditionally, with no terms or clauses.

I cried on the way to the emergency vet, Coldplay’s “Yellow” on the car stereo, and I almost laughed at the poignancy of my tears flowing while singing look at the stars, look how they shine for you. And then I didn’t cry again. I stroked her fur, I kissed her nose, my kids cried, my husband cried, and I was already cried out. Instead of letting those emotions out, I let them tear at me from the inside out, I let them rip a hole in my heart that I thought would repair itself in time, but would only linger, an itchy scar that just gets worse every time I scratch it.

It’s been three months. I still ache, and I suspect I always will. Death doesn’t get easier, it just gets scarred over. I suppose another dog to fuss over, to provide a playmate for Ren would help heal that scar, but I can’t get past the guilt I feel for even thinking about it, as if its a reflection on Lili that we’d bring a new dog into our home.

I don’t know what to do. About getting another dog, about the hole in my heart. It might take a while to figure it out.