It has been over two weeks since we said goodbye to our beloved black Labrador, Zeke.

I have not felt ready before now to write about our loss.

Truth be told, I am still not ready.

How can the life, laughter and healing a beloved animal brings to our small worlds possibly be summarized in a single brief column? I know that whatever I write, it won’t be enough.

Zeke rocked my world from the first time we met. Think “Marley and Me.”

It was in March 2014, only three short months after my dad had died. It had been a long, bitterly cold and abnormally snowy winter, which made the post-death grief period excruciatingly difficult to navigate. Just getting from one minute to the next sometimes took all I had.

My mom and I went to a rural Seneca farm that raised Labradors. Zeke was the runt in a litter of 10. He greeted us at the door and followed my mom to the couch, where he stood and placed his paws on her lap.

That was it. After that move, none of the remaining puppies were in contention for a new home with us. Zeke would go on to use that move hundreds of times throughout his life. And it pretty much worked every single time.

My 12-year-old nephews went with me a few weeks later to pick up Zeke and bring him home.

Puppy madness had officially begun. Puppies have a lot of energy. Multiply that by 1,000 and you will have a bit of an idea of Labrador puppy energy.

There were times during Zeke’s first few months with us when I wondered how I would ever make it to his first birthday. Now, 12 years later, I wonder how and why it went so fast.

I signed him up for training at Four Leaf K9 in Streator. Erin, the owner, came to our home to work with us, and I even wrote a piece about that adventure for The Times, while I worked as a reporter. She gave Zeke a “3” for trainability, but he scored a solid “10” for personality. And he turned out to be every bit of that “10” and more.

I dropped the ball and didn’t remain consistent with training after Erin was done with us. But we did have a big fenced-in backyard, so Zeke could go outside and burn off all that excess energy anytime he wanted. Or anytime we wanted. And my brother John (“Uncle John”) has an enormous amount of energy too, so they were a match made in heaven. He and Zeke hit it off from the first time they met, until the day before he died.

Zeke loved people, and most people loved Zeke. He showed his love for people by body slamming them when they came over. Zeke also loved food. One might call it an abnormal love for food, but from what I have seen and heard, it is typical black Labrador behavior. Their appetites are insatiable, and I do mean insatiable.

When I got Zeke, it had been 10 years since we had our last dog, and that loss had been devastating. I love dogs, so much that I couldn’t bring myself to get another one for that long afterward because of the immense hole they leave when they are gone.

One of the reasons I was ready to get another dog, besides grieving the loss of my dad, was to help curb my chronic anxiety. Turns out, Zeke had anxiety, too. And that anxiety manifested itself in destructive tendencies when left home alone, and in me never getting a moment’s rest when Zeke wanted something.

When I got married in March 2023 and Zeke and I moved into our new home, things changed. My husband’s gentle discipline helped us manage Zeke’s anxiety significantly. Zeke formed a strong bond with his new dad, and they spent many an evening wrestling on the living room floor.

Ever the clown, we couldn’t get enough videos of Zeke rolling around in the grass or walking around the house with his blanket hanging off of him or inhaling every meal as if it were his first and last meal. Those videos are our lifeline now.

In previous columns, I have shared how, while I was writing, Zeke has been curled up on his pillow behind me, quietly snoring (and sometimes not so quietly).

As I write today, Zeke sits behind me on his pillow, but now it is his remains in a box with his name engraved on a gold plate on top, next to his purple collar placed in a heart shape. The box is wrapped in his blanket, which we haven’t been able to bring ourselves to wash yet. His scent is still there, and occasionally, when we need to, we hold it up to our faces and breathe in deep. For a moment, he is just a breath away.

I am not sure I will ever be ready to wash that blanket.

SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Zavada Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.