Had to put my "baby" to sleep last night

Hi everyone. It means a lot to me, reading everyone's messages. It's helping me through this grief.

Saturday night, all Sunday and early this morning, I was in a major state of Denial and wouldn't accept that Roxanne had shut down due to "age". I was determined that it must have been from perhaps the apartment was too warm or she ate something bad, etc.

Then, this morning happened ... I forced myself out the door to go to the laundry room. The cleaning lady was there and I saw that she was really upset about something. We got talking and I found out that her 15 year old dog was put to sleep on Friday night. We got talking about how things were on the final day and especially in the final 5-10 minutes at home and her dog went through exactly the same symptoms and behaviour as Roxanne, due to "age". I finally felt something change within me this morning, some sort of acceptance as to it actually was due to "age" for Roxanne.

My mom came over to visit from 11:30am - 5:00pm and got me out of the apartment for a nature walk at nearby park. I didn't feel like going out the door and didn't know how I was going to feel seeing people with their dogs but it did me a lot of good actually! Petting the dogs and getting "kisses" felt really great.

Today didn't start off very well and I had a major crying outbreak for about 2 hours from 9-11am, the type of bawling where you're gasping and having trouble breathing. It's been another day of on & off crying. I can't bring myself to throw out any of Roxanne's toys or even her food and can tell that I'm not ready yet. I'm actually hoping to donate some eventually to a local cat rescue. I also have cat litter for them.

Tomorrow morning, I have to go grocery shopping and will have to avoid the cat food & litter aisle completely! Can't even look at these things here at home at the moment.

Thank You everyone for listening/reading.