Desperately Seeking Closure

How do you say "I love you" and "I am sorry" to someone who doesn't exist anymore? How do you express a love that has grown over many years, a dedication and appreciation to serve beyond yourself to someone who will not hear, see or feel your thoughts and actions anymore? How do you go on trying to reach someone who is not there anymore?

It's an endless loop, a door that you can't close. Every day you continue to reach out to connect because you still haven't accepted that you can't.

I continue to hold out little pieces of cheese for Kuma and pretend she is eating them like before. I continue to put out fresh water for her twice a day and I look into her bowl expecting to see some signs that she drank some of it. I look outside where she walked and peed and try to imagine her there. I know it's stupid so why do I keep doing it?

It's because I want to believe.

I keep trying to connect with Kuma, I keep wanting to believe that somehow she is still alive and will see and feel my love and caring for her. I want her to know that she is not forgotton, that I didn't give up on her. I want to right a wrong that I did to her by letting them kill her when she was doing everything she could to heal and to live.

But, I can never change what I did.

I cannot go back in time. I cannot jump into another parallel universe where I saved her. I cannot bring her back to life. I cannot connect with her anymore.

And this is the struggle. Trying to change the past, knowing that it can never be changed. Hoping somewhere desperately in my mind that if I keep trying that somehow it will change. Maybe perhaps if I am good, if I keep doing good, then I will change the bad that I did. That Kuma will see and feel it and come back or give me a sign that she is still alive and sees and feels what I am doing for her.

Not having closure is not being able to right a wrong. Having instead, to live the rest of my life knowing that I could have saved my best friend and I didn't. Not having closure is trying to relive those moments where I should have done something to save her and didn't. Reliving those moments, trying to make them real again.

In a normal sense, not having closure is not being able to say goodbye.

The moment I relive everyday before falling asleep, is Kuma's final moment when she was struggling to live, in the middle of a seizure, unconscience but coming out of her coma, when her heart was stopped. She didn't know that she would die. She was trying to live. She was caught off guard. She did not expect to die. Animals know when they are going to die. Kuma knew that she was going to live and was doing what she could to keep living. This was the betrayal. Killing her in the middle of her trying. Kuma did not die, she was killed.

How do I tell Kuma that I am sorry, that I love her and that I wish I could have given her a few more days to live?