Is it okay to cry years after a pet has died?

Some info: I’ve always loved animals, a lot, I find it easier to connect with animals than it is with people, as animals are pure, sweet and innocent, they don’t judge and are always great companions. I can spend hours alone with my cats or dog just petting them, spending time with them, loving them. My mom’s side of the family is really like this, we all have a very big love of animals and have since I can remember. both my brothers love them as well. I just find a connection with animals, it’s easier to become friends with them, easier to connect even though they can’t speak our language, I sometimes feel like I understand what they’re tryig to say. I just get really depressed sometimes, and I feel like im alone in this world, and I cant eat or sleep or relax without crying and thinking about my loved ones(Animals of course included) that have died.

TJ was my first cat, she was a very pretty tortoise shell colored cat. I loved her as a child, she was named after me and my brothers first letters of our name(Tyler and Justin), we both loved her, she had a beautiful grey kitten that I named Sassy who me and my mother both loved also, TJ died a long while ago, but Sassy lived on until 2 years ago, and when we were burying her with our first dog Brandy and TJ, I didnt even cry. But I definitely felt the pain, Sassy was such a great cat, she never hunted, she never scratched or bit, she was always loving and always there for me. Now when I think about her and her mother, I can’t help but cry, I feel bad for not crying while me and my mom was burying her, I tried to play the role of the big man, not crying because you can’t squeeze tears out of a stone or whatever they say now, but I feel so terrible in it all.

The saddest part is I have no pictures of them, nothing to look at and think about how good of pets they were, only memories which are slowly fading away which is really sad for me to think about. I also had a duckling I rescued from the local county fair, as someone had won a baby duck from a game and was trying to find it a home, so I begged my mom and dad to save it. We got him and brought it home, and I fell in love with him, named him Afflack based off that commercial with the duck and so on that used to air a lot. Long story short, I raised him, saw him fly for the first time, when he was scared, he would quickly waddle behind my feet and hide as if I was his mother, and he was always so sweet.

Eventually though, I knew the day had to come when he needed to be released, so he could live his life as a real duck. We went to the pet farm which is right by my house, which allowed people to release their animals so they can be free and live a happy life with others of their species. I remember holding him in my arms and saying goodbye one last time, as he waddled off, got bit at by a goose, but he bit right back which was the last thing I remember before we left. We came back a few weeks later to check up on him, and they had said he was shipped off for winter, or that he had been sent to another farm where there’s more land to fly, since this area was a petting farm(with a nice bit of land but the place he went to was far bigger, where he could fly in flocks with his own kind).

I have a picture in front of me, taken in august of 2003 of him as a cute little yellow duckling, right beside my kitten at that time(Who is now a full grown tomcat I see from time to time). I still wonder, if maybe they killed him and cooked him up or something, which would absolutely devastate me, it already does. I think about how I released him, which if he was killed was my fault that his life was ended early, and if somehow I find out that’s what indeed happened I will never forgive myself, it makes me cry just to thinking about it.

My current dog, Lady, is going on 13… and I pray to god that she’s around for a few years longer, because I will not know what I will do if she suddenly passes away, I dont know how I would cope, or if I even could. It would destroy me mentally and physically.

it’s just that I really hope my pets are in a better place, but I just dont know and it makes me very sad thinking about it. How they were once so lively and loving life, and now they’re just gone forever. I always feel like I could have been with them more, I feel like the time they each had on this earth could have been better, I could have loved them more, played with them more, spent more time with them and everything else.

I really hope my pets are in a better place, but I just dont know and it makes me very sad thinking about it. How they were once so lively and loving life, and now they’re just gone forever.