I lost my dog and my marriage pretty much at the same time.

My husband and I had been going through a cordial separation process for half a year when Jessie, our 12-year-old rescue lab, got sick. Her breathing became labored, she was losing weight without explanation, and she would stick close to me with a persistent melancholy that I couldn’t ignore.

The vet found a large tumor in her lungs. When she died four months later, I was bereft.

Jessie represented our family’s happiest times, a reflection of us when we were younger and still intact. She was the one consistent and loving connection we all had before the children — and then the marriage — grew up and moved out.

No matter that we had an amicable divorce and still communicated frequently, even had some holidays together. When Jessie died, there was no denying that our once intimate family of four — no longer connected legally or together physically — was, if not quite over, then irrevocably changed….. [continued]