Love. It’s the simplest of words. Just four letters, and one of the first added to our vocabulary  as a child. Yet, it has so very many meanings. 

Love for our parents. Our significant other. Our children. Our family. Our friends. We even use it outside of the context of relationships – for food, or movies, or music or hobbies. Yet, even though we use it to describe so many different things – can we really explain what it means? When I try to answer that, I end up describing how it feels. And even then, I fall short.

I love Murdock (yes, I purposely use the present tense). That seems utterly insufficient to explain how we feel about our furry soulmates. Those four letters cannot possibly define what I feel, what he means to me, the place he has in my life. But yet, with the limits of the English language, I suppose finding words, let alone a word, for his place in my life is futile.

I think one reason this is especially true for our furry soulmates is that they fill so many roles in our lives. Murdock was my best friend. He was my child. He was my roommate. He was my other half. He was my protector. He was my constant companion. He was my sunshine. The list of how I would describe my love for him is endless, and always incomplete. And because we can’t adequately explain that love – we also struggle to explain the grief that is left behind. How can someone who has not had that once in a lifetime furry soulmate possibly understand the depth of that love and loss? 

That love is also unique because it is so pure. I was never angry at Murdock (even when I probably should have been). He never frustrated me or disappointed me. I never had expectations of him or him of me, and he never hurt me. All I had to do was spend time with him, feed and walk him, take care of his medical needs (and in Murdock’s case, meet his demands), and he was endlessly devoted. All he had to do was look at me and be his own unique self, and I eternally loved him.

To have that kind of love, and then not, is devastating. Loving Murdock was the deepest and easiest love I will ever have. And living without it is the most difficult thing I will ever do.

Every night before bed, even when I knew he could no longer hear me, I told Murdock that I loved him more than all the stars in the sky. Again, attaching words that were wholly inadequate (let alone that he could not understand). When it came time to engrave the box holding his remains, it was clear that my nightly message must be what was written. Several months after he departed, I was having a particularly hard day as I walked through the cafeteria for lunch. I happened to glance at a greeting card rack. A card facing me said “I love you more than all the stars in the sky.” My boy found a way to say it back to me. The words, and their inadequacy, don’t matter. The memory of our bedtime ritual does.

Love is a terribly insufficient word. The life we shared – that is what matters, and is all the more beautiful precisely because it is beyond explanation.