Last week, my sidekick of 16 years, Charlie Brown, our old, wise labradoodle, passed away. He wasn’t just part of our family; he was stitched into the story of our lives.
We adopted Charlie Brown just a year into our relationship, and somehow this scruffy little pup became part of the beginning of our love story. He was there when we moved countries, settling into new homes and new routines as if to say, we’re doing this together. We used to always say, we’re a package deal. He helped raise our daughter, loving her in his steady, understated way, watching her grow up beside him. He wasn’t the overly smoochy kind of dog, and I loved that about him. He had attitude, but he also had this uncanny knowing. On the days when life felt heavy, he would simply lie next to me, his weight and warmth saying more than words ever could.
We were companions in the truest sense, always moving through the days side by side. He came with me to work, snoozing under my desk. In his younger years, he’d head off with my father-in-law to building sites, taking his role as sidekick seriously. We travelled to Queenstown together, hiked mountains, wandered shops. He was usually in the room when I meditated, wherever that may be, either sleeping, or annoying me to be let out. He came to staff parties, family gatherings, weddings. Wherever we went, he came too.
Over time, as his body grew old, our lives slowed together, shorter walks, longer pauses, softer days. Charlie Brown wasn’t just alongside my life, he was living it with me. A breathing, feeling soul whose presence became part of my own daily rhythm.
My heart is broken, but alongside the grief is deep gratitude. Gratitude for what he gave, for how he stayed, and for the way my meditation practice helped me notice it all while he was here.
Seven years of sitting daily has given me a foundation I can lean on when life brings both beauty and heartbreak. My practice has taught me to stop, to slow down, to notice. To be present in the ordinary moments of being alive.
It has also taught me something we so often try to avoid: that life is impermanent. That nothing, and no one, stays forever. Over the years I’ve read and sat with teachings on death, not as a morbid fixation, but as a doorway into the truth of life. To remember that we will lose what we love, and that knowing this can make us love more fiercely while it’s here.
As Charlie grew slower in these last few years, my practice allowed me to meet him in that slowness, on shorter walks, during quiet days spent together, when he simply lay at my feet or snored loudly in the same room. I wasn’t rushing past those moments, blind to their fragility. I was awake to them. Aware that one day I would look back and wish for even a single one of them again.
There were many moments where I knew he wouldn’t always be here. And while that knowing breaks my heart now, I’m also so grateful I didn’t look away from it. I let myself love him, fully, knowing it would end.
What I’m also grateful for is how my practice has helped me be with grief itself. Losing Charlie has cracked me open. The tears, the heaviness, the hollow spaces where he used to be, they all come in waves. My meditation has been a long training in noticing. Noticing what is here, even when it’s uncomfortable. And a big part of this is noticing when I want something to be other than it is. I want the sadness to be gone. I want Charlie to be back home, wiht us. Especially when it’s uncomfortable. So instead of running from the ache, I’ve been able , not perfectly, not always, but often, to sit with it. To let the sadness wash through, to feel the rawness of missing him, and to let it move in its own time.
It hasn’t made the grief smaller. But it has made it more honest. I can meet it without armouring up, without trying to tidy it away. I can cry, and ache, and keep loving him, all at once.
And strangely, there’s a tenderness in that. A kind of quiet closeness with him that lingers even in the heartbreak.
When someone has been by your side for 16 years, they don’t just live in your mind, they live in your nervous system. Charlie was part of my daily rhythm: the feel of my foot stretching out under my desk to find his belly, the sound of his breathing at night, the glance to see which spot he’d chosen to curl up in. My body still looks for him, before my mind can catch up. That habitualness is love etched into the body.
And then, there is the shock of his absence. Grief isn’t just emotional , it’s deeply physical. My stomach has been in knots, I’ve lost my appetite, I’ve felt sick. The weight of missing him sits in my chest, pressing down. I’ve noticed how my whole mind, body & heart organism, is trying to recalibrate to life without him.
Meditation has given me the capacity to see this, to stay present even in the discomfort. Instead of numbing or overriding the signals, I can witness them, tend to them, and let them move through. Awareness doesn’t take away the ache, but it softens the resistance. It allows me to trust that even the hardest waves will eventually pass. And alongside the emptiness, there’s also presence. Because when I close my eyes, I can still feel him: the patches on his nose, the softness of his ears, the rhythm we once shared. My heart aches, and yet, with each day passing since his death, I can also feel the heaviness lifting.
Meditation doesn’t erase heartbreak.
It doesn’t mean I miss him any less. What it does is make room. Room to love deeply while he was alive, and room to grieve fully now that he’s gone. I wholeheartedly know this would have been a different life experience if I hadn’t had the foundation of my practice. That foundation let me sit with the impermanence of life, notice the ordinary sacred moments, allow the grief to wash through my body, and keep loving even in the ache.
Charlie Brown taught me so much about presence, patience, and companionship. And my practice gave me the awareness to actually receive those teachings. For that, I am endlessly grateful.