Thanks again everyone. It still hurts so bad. I scanned in all the pictures I had taken of him before digital cameras (and cursed both the crappy camera and my poor photography skills of those early years), and noticed how much his face had grayed in his older years.

I have put up basically a shrine to him in my room, I printed up a bunch of 8"x10"s and framed them, they are all up on the wall and the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning. We picked up his ashes the other day, now I am on the hunt for the perfect urn, or maybe I'll make one myself and personalize it. So for now Bandit is sitting on my armoire next to all his pictures.

Then today we took Gandy in for a teeth cleaning and when I went to pick him up the girl working at the vet's handed me Bandit's collar. I had forgotten to take it off that day and thought it was lost forever. It was one of those things that I wanted from him, but afterwards I just assumed it had went with his body to the crematorium and didn't want to face disappointment by asking about it and being told it was gone.

I went to a pet loss support group that my vet offers, that helped a bit. It only meets once a month though.

What a painful process.