06/05/2026
Eight years have passed since the day I had to say goodbye to Tonto, and it still doesn’t feel like something my head or my heart is meant to fully understand.
Eight years ago, I held his paws, buried my face in his neck and I lied to him. I whispered the most painful words I have ever spoken: “it’s okay buddy, you can go now, I’ll be okay,” into his ear, and that moment changed every single one that came after it. I was not okay. I would never be okay again. He knew it and I knew it.
It is a heartbreaking lie I have had to tell twice now, but he was the first one that had to hear it.
We had 12.5 years together before he lost his battle with cancer, and in that time he became so much more than a friend. He was comfort, stability and the quiet kind of love that teaches you how to exist in the world a little softer. Losing him felt like losing a place I went to when I needed to feel okay. He WAS my okay.
Grief hasn’t stayed still across these eight years. It has changed shape, but it has never left. It’s become something I carry rather than something I move past. It holds both the love I had for him and the pain of not being able to give or receive that love anymore in the way I once did.
I still look for him. I still talk to him. I have other Arlo and Pepper in my life now who I love deeply, and I’m grateful for them, but Tonto will always be his own chapter - one that nothing can repeat or replace.
Eight years later, the only thing that feels new is the distance between then and now. Everything else stays the same: the love, the missing piece and the fact that I will always wish there were more moments left with him. He taught me love, and then he taught me loss. Two lessons that have changed who I am entirely.
What I struggle with most is that there are no new moments with him anymore. No new memories being made. All I have now are the memories we already wrote together, and I hold onto them tightly because that’s all that remains.
So here is an old, low-quality video of us together. Because I can never film a new one. A much younger me. An alive him. I miss you so very much, Tonto. I always will. #