To My Taneli <3

This post has been on my mind for a week now. But when I try to write, nothing comes out. I've felt really empty.

No matter how much I tried to save my little boy cat Taneli, he unfortunately passed away last Sunday, on Easter Day. Anyone who knows me, knows how dear my cats are to me, and I have been so heartbroken ever since.

Taneli's kidneys failed, and even though I saw how he fighted to stay alive, his body was just failing him. I saw the will he'd had in him and it was breaking my heart into millions of pieces to let him go.

Death is something that really stops us and opens your eyes. It feels so final and unreversable. It's difficult to face for most of us and I've seen many people escaping it in the moment when I would have needed them, sadly. In the moment of pain you see who really is there for you when you need them. Who asks you for a walk and gives you a hug, who called you, who checks in on you. Those people are priceless to have, especially during the quarantine.

But to me the most powerful message in the middle of all of this has been love. To me, Taneli was pure love. His whole being was love and I loved everything about him. He was my loyal friend who was always beside me for 14 years.

Loosing that love causes so much pain that it feels unbearable. I've really had times when I felt I cannot bare this anymore. The loneliness in isolation made it so much worse and I've also been thinking about the importance of other people in our lives. I'm thoroughly thankful for the fact that I did not have to be completely alone in this and I got support and hugs in the moment when I really needed it. I truly made a difference to me in that point.

But do we really ever loose love? I understood, that once pain gives some space for other feelings, you can see that the love is still there, even thought the object of love in physically not present anymore. And that's the only thing that matters. Every time we loose a loved one, we still get to keep the love. And this is what is important.

Many people fear love, or loosing love to be specific. Because the pain you feel when you loose someone you love is so severe that we do anything we can to avoid that. Because of that, we people may choose that fear instead of love. To avoid loving because they fear being rejected or left and loosing that love. I have lost a lot of things that I've loved in my life and I've learned something also about love and loosing things you love in the process.

Love is accepting. Itä accepting the other soul just as it is, and also giving it space. Space to be, space to grow. Love is not owning or having someone for yourself. When you really love someone, you give it the liberty to choose to be with you. And if you're not chosen, you still get to love. You don't have to give up the love energy. True love is not conditional and it's not based on pain or fear. Love is purely wanting good to the other soul.

Taneli was not "perfect", he could be very irritating from time to time. But I loved also that feature in him.

You don't love the other soul only for it's perfections, you love it as a whole, including it's imperfections. Through the imperfections you still can see the perfection in the other soul.

So when you say to the other soul that you're perfect, you don't mean that you actually think he or she has no flaws. You mean that you see those things, too, and you accept them and see them as a part of his/her perfection.

I believe that animals are here to teach us and I feel like I've learned a lot from Taneli. And now that a little time has passed on, I feel him strongly in my heart. He will always be there, and when I listen to my heart, I hear how his message to me is to love myself as purely as he loved me. I cherish that lesson and now try to live it every day. Taneli has lived with me three of my last relationships when I was not so loving towards myself, so I take this message very seriously.

It was Taneli's illness that inspired me to start this blog. Like I've told before, just before he got sick I lost my other job and I've only lived with half income for the last two months which has been very hard for me of course. So I decided to start this blog and to sell my knit and crochet designs. But that has not been the only reason I do this. I do this simply because I love writing this blog. I love impressing myself through that. I may never have started this blog without my boy getting sick, so I'm sure in the end it had a deeper meaning.

Now my dear boy is in heaven with my nonna and my babbo, and I feel their support and love all the time. Also when writing this. They all gave me something very important during their lifetime, and they all still live in my heart as love. You see, love never dies. We always get to keep that, and that is why we should never choose fear over love.