I wasn’t planning to cry over my dog this morning.
I wasn’t planning to cry at all.
I was sitting on the back porch with my coffee, playing on my phone like I usually do before I fire up the office and become a responsible employed adult. It was an entirely normal morning.
And then Dolly Parton broke my fucking heart.
First, We Need to Talk About Dolly
I’ve been listening to Dolly Parton lately, which is a sentence I never expected to write.
I generally despise country music. I don’t mean I don’t particularly care for it. I mean I have successfully made it through more than half a century on this planet without intentionally putting on country music for my own enjoyment.
Then Dolly died.
And that one hit differently.
My kids went to Dollywood once when we were in Tennessee ages ago, but Dolly goes back much farther than that for me. I grew up in Louisiana. She was just there. She was part of the landscape of my childhood.
She was on the Muppets. I watched 9 to 5. Her face, her hair, her voice, her personality—all of it was woven into the background of growing up in the South.
So the other day, out of curiosity and nostalgia, I queued up some Dolly Parton on Spotify.
And goddammit.
I liked it.
Then I heard I Will Always Love You.
And here is where I confess something that apparently escaped my attention for my entire life:
I did not know Dolly wrote it. I knew Whitney didn’t, but I guess I thought maybe Elvis did. He wrote all the good stuff.
I know. I KNOW.
No judgment please.
But I heard her beautiful voice singing it, immediately fell in love with it, and played it repeatedly.
And I was fine.
Until it made me think about Blitz and Elvis this morning.
Blitz Had Two Songs
My girl had exactly two songs she sang.
Not “dogs sometimes howl when they hear music.”
No.
Blitz had songs.
There were exactly two, and apparently she was a discerning little music critic because only the correct versions would do.
Can’t Help Falling In Love, Elvis Presley version.
And Earth Angel, performed by my friends in Bella Morte.
If either of those songs started playing, Blitz could be doing absolutely anything and she would stop.
Then she’d sing.
That beautiful, absurd dog would throw her head back and HOWL.
So naturally, we howled too.
We sang. Blitz sang. Everybody howled. The house sounded like an asylum had decided to form an a cappella group.
And it never, ever failed to make us laugh.
Years ago—I showed Andy Deane, the lead singer of Bella Morte, a video of Blitz singing along with Earth Angel. The one they unknowingly performed to an audience of zombies that one time.
He lost it.
The whole band thought it was hilarious.
And that’s actually part of how Andy and I became friends.
Because of Blitz.
Of course it was because of Blitz.
And Then This Morning Happened
I’ve been doing better.
I really have.
Losing Blitz destroyed something in me for a while, but time has been doing what time reluctantly does.
I’ve been healing.
I can look at her pictures now and smile. I can talk about the ridiculous things she did. I can remember nearly sixteen years of loving that dog and feel incredibly lucky that I got to have her instead of only feeling devastated that I lost her.
Most days, I am okay.
And then this morning Dolly sang I Will Always Love You.
And something inside me just fucking collapsed.
Because suddenly I didn’t hear only Dolly’s beautiful voice.
I heard the place where Blitz’s voice was supposed to be.
I wanted her to stop whatever she was doing.
I wanted that head to go up.
I wanted the howl.
I wanted to start singing and howling with her like a lunatic.
I wanted to laugh.
I wanted my dog.
Not in some philosophical “I’m grateful for our memories” way.
I want my fucking dog back.
I want her right here.
I want one more song.
One more howl.
One more time laughing so hard because this dog had somehow decided she had musical preferences and apparently expected the rest of us to participate.
Just one.
Grief Is Such an Asshole
That’s the part nobody can really prepare you for.
You can be okay.
You can actually, legitimately be healing.
And grief can still walk onto your back porch on an otherwise completely ordinary morning, sit down next to your coffee, and punch you directly in the chest.
There doesn’t have to be an anniversary.
There doesn’t have to be a reason.
Sometimes a song just finds the exact little door you’ve finally managed to close and kicks the motherfucker open.
And this one physically hurts.
I hurt for her.
I miss her so badly this morning that I want to crawl back into bed, pull the covers over my head and cancel the entire concept of Thursday.
But I have work.
I have an office to fire up.
I have people expecting me to function like a person who wasn’t just emotionally assassinated by Dolly Parton before breakfast.
So I suppose I’m going to drink my coffee.
I’m going to go to work.
And I’m going to let this hurt for a while instead of pretending that healing means I’m never allowed to fall apart over her again.
Because apparently love doesn’t work that way.
Nearly sixteen years of loving somebody doesn’t disappear just because you’ve gotten better at living without them.
Sometimes your heart remembers.
Sometimes your body remembers.
And sometimes a song begins and every part of you waits for a howl that isn’t coming.
God, Blitz.
I would give anything to hear you sing it with me one more time.
I will always love you, baby girl.
Obviously.
Why the fuck else would it still hurt this much?
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