Yesterday morning, I went to the bank.
I was supposed to meet with Dan, my stock guy, but while I was there, I decided to check in on the business card for Random Rescue. Everything with the card was fine, but the woman helping me suggested I sit down with someone to talk about my options, since I don’t use it very often.
So I did.
And somehow, what started as a conversation about a credit card became a conversation about cats, dogs, grief, love, and the animals who carry us through entire chapters of our lives.
She asked me what Random Rescue was.
“Is it for animals?”
I laughed because people ask me that all the time. I told her no, but before long we were talking about animals anyway.
Apparently, her dad had decided that what her household needed was another kitten, so he basically dropped one into the family on Halloween night. The cat they already have is not having it. The kitten is bouncing all over her, disrupting her world, and generally doing exactly what kittens do.
Immediately, I thought about something my vet had just recommended for Bill: Feliway. I had started using it to help calm his nerves, and it seemed to be helping, so I told her about it.
I love moments like that.
When somebody gives me something that helps me, I want to pass it along. Information, comfort, a recommendation, a little piece of hope—whatever it is. If it worked for me, maybe it can make somebody else’s day a tiny bit easier, too.
Then our conversation shifted.
We started talking about our dogs.
Not just dogs. Our dogs.
The ones who belonged to a particular chapter of our lives. The ones who knew us. The ones who woke up with us, watched us struggle, watched us change, and somehow seemed to know what we were feeling before we ever said a word.
Her dog’s name was Cito. She lost him about six months ago.
She told me how Cito had been her morning buddy. He would get up with her. He would be there while she had her coffee. He knew her moods. He knew when something wasn’t right.
And as she talked, I kept thinking:
Casey.
She was describing Cito, but I understood every word because I had lived my own version of that love.
There was something incredibly cathartic about sitting across from another person and hearing her talk about her dog six months after losing him. There was nothing to fix. Nothing clever to say. I could simply listen.
I could let her tell me who Cito was. I could let her honor him.
And because I have loved and lost Casey, I could understand the enormous thing hiding inside seemingly little memories like morning coffee.
That is the thing about losing an animal who has walked through life with you:
You don’t only miss them. You miss the life you had with them.
You miss the morning routine. The footsteps. The place they slept. The way they looked at you. The person you were when they were beside you.
She also told me that Cito had once had a cat companion. Apparently, they didn’t get along in the beginning, but eventually they became best friends. When the cat died, Cito began declining, too. He lived for about another year.
So now, even with the current household cat completely unimpressed by this bouncing new kitten, she has hope.
Maybe they won’t always be strangers. Maybe one day they’ll be family.
And there we were—two women who had gone to work that morning, sitting inside a bank, talking about animals we loved.
That’s connection to me.
Sometimes the most meaningful thing we can offer another person is evidence that we have survived something they are currently surviving.
Not because their experience will look exactly like ours. Not because grief has a formula. But because there is strength in knowing someone else has walked through the door you’re standing in front of.
I know what it is to lose the dog who saw me through an enormous chapter of my life. I know how devastating that loss can be.
But I also know something now that I couldn’t have known at the beginning:
Grief can become honor.
The pain doesn’t erase the love. Eventually, somehow, the love becomes the part you learn to carry forward.
And maybe that’s one of the reasons we go through things at all—not because we’re supposed to have all the answers afterward, but because one day we might find ourselves sitting across from someone who is six months into a grief we recognize.
And we can say, in whatever words feel right:
I know that love. Tell me about him.
What a gift it is to be able to hold space for another human being. To let someone speak the name of someone they loved. To realize that sometimes we rescue each other completely by accident.
I went into the bank to talk about a card called Random Rescue.
Turns out, a random rescue was exactly what I found.
