The First Christmas Without Cooper

Christmas is coming, and I already feel it.

Not in the way you're supposed to feel it. The anticipation, the warmth, the lists and the planning. I feel it the way you feel a bruise when something brushes against it. A quiet dread that's been sitting with me since the decorations started appearing in shops and the question of what are we doing this year? started coming up in conversation.

Because this year, Cooper won't be here for it.

We've done this before.

When we lost Mia, our first Christmas without her was one of the hardest days of that year. You think you've braced yourself for it, and then the day arrives and the brace isn't quite enough.

There's a particular cruelty to celebrations when someone is missing from them. The joy and the absence exist in the same moment, pulling in opposite directions.

So you'd think we'd know what to expect this time.

We don't. Or maybe we do, and that's exactly the problem.

There are stockings in a box somewhere with their names on them.

Mia's. Cooper's. Henley's. Harper's.

Every year without fail, each dog has had their own stocking. It was never something we thought about. It was just part of Christmas, as natural as the tree, the lunch or the carols playing in the background.

Of course they had stockings. Of course they were included. They were family.

This year, I don't know what to do with the ones that belong to dogs who are no longer here. Put them up and sit with the weight of that. Leave them in the box and sit with the weight of that instead.

There's no version of this that doesn't carry something heavy.

We had a tradition.

Every Christmas morning, Cooper and Mia got a specific treat: a big bulk box of dog biscuits that we'd save just for that day.

Normally, a biscuit was one biscuit, taken back to the mat and eaten with great ceremony. But on Christmas morning, the rules changed. We'd put the box in front of them and let them bite into it themselves, helping themselves to as many as they wanted for five or ten minutes.

Total, unreserved chaos.

Cooper, predictably, treated this as a personal challenge. He would inhale half the box before we'd had a chance to worry about his stomach, tail going, eyes bright, absolutely certain this was the greatest day of any year in recorded history.

Henley and Harper have inherited that tradition now.

We'll do it again this Christmas. The box, the chaos, the five minutes of pure dog joy. And it will be wonderful. And it will not be the same.

Both of those things will be true at once.

Their presence makes the absence louder, not quieter.

I love Henley and Harper completely. That's not the complicated part.

The complicated part is that they came after. They inherited the traditions without knowing where they came from.

They'll tear into that biscuit box this Christmas with everything they have, and somewhere in the middle of it, I'll be watching them and thinking about the dogs who started it.

Cooper's passing is still so raw that this Christmas is already doing something unexpected. It's making me think about the Christmas that will come one day without Henley. Without Harper. A future loss I have no business grieving yet, but one that feels suddenly, achingly possible in a way it didn't before.

That's what fresh grief does sometimes. It doesn't just sit in the present. It reaches forward and makes you feel things you weren't ready to feel yet.

Nobody tells you this when you bring a puppy home.

In that first moment, with the chaos of a new dog, the chewed shoes, the accidents on the floor and the ridiculous, overwhelming love of it, nobody sits you down and says, "One day this will be the hardest thing."

One day there will be a Christmas where their stocking stays in the box, and you won't know what to do with yourself.

You know it, somewhere. Of course you do.

But knowing it and living it are entirely different things.

And I don't think any amount of knowing makes you ready.

We'll get through this Christmas.

I know that.

We've done hard things before and come out the other side, and this will be no different.

But I also think it's okay to say out loud that we're not entirely prepared for it. That knowing it's coming doesn't make it easier. That you can love the dogs still by your side and grieve the ones who aren't in the same breath, on the same day, sometimes in the same moment.

If this is your first Christmas without a pet you loved, I hope you find a way through it that feels right for you. Put the stocking up or leave it in the box. Do the tradition or skip it this year. Let the day be hard if it needs to be hard.

There's no right answer.

As for us, we haven't decided what to do with Mia's and Cooper's stockings just yet. But the biscuit box will definitely be making an appearance.

And somewhere between Henley and Harper shoving their faces into it, we'll be thinking about the two dogs who started the whole ridiculous tradition.

We miss you, Coop. Christmas won't be quite the same without you 💙💚