Grief does not always arrive in neat, manageable waves. Sometimes it comes back wearing a different face, at a different time, and lands with the same brutal force. For the Gaudreau family, Tuesday, August 4 brought that reminder again when Meredith Gaudreau shared that Kingy had died at 10, just as the two-year anniversary of Johnny Gaudreau’s death draws closer.
Meredith Gaudreau has never hidden how much Kingy meant to her. She has talked about him going back to 2018, saying he was there the first time Johnny Gaudreau came into her life. She later called him “the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” and her posts over the years made it clear this was not just a pet, but part of the family’s emotional fabric.
That is what makes this loss sting. Her tribute on Instagram — “Through it all my boy 🖤. With John now.” — was brief, but it said everything that needed saying. Kingy was not some background detail in the Gaudreau story. He was there for the milestones, the babies, the everyday moments, and the years of life that now feel painfully fragile in hindsight.
The timeline matters here. In October 2020, Meredith Gaudreau posted, “Love my Kingy more and more every second 🖤,” on his fifth birthday. In December 2022, shortly after Noa’s birth, she wrote, “Level up protectiveness 🖤🖤” while sharing photos of Kingy. A year later, she posted, “My baby boy with my baby girl 🖤🩷,” alongside a photo of Kingy and Noa. This was a dog woven into the family’s story, not perched at its edge.
And now the family is carrying this loss while still moving toward an anniversary no one in that household can possibly treat lightly. On August 29, 2024, Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Gaudreau were struck and killed by an alleged drunk driver while riding bicycles. Meredith Gaudreau and Johnny Gaudreau shared three children — Noa, Johnny Jr., and Carter — and every new public reminder of that loss inevitably lands with extra weight.
There is something especially cruel about a smaller grief arriving in the shadow of a much larger one. Kingy’s death does not compare to the tragedy that hit the family in 2024, but it is still another goodbye, another empty space, another piece of everyday life that has to be carried without warning. Meredith Gaudreau’s tribute, and the response from Odette Werenski, showed that others around the family understood exactly what Kingy meant.
In the end, this is why the post resonated. It was not just about a dog dying at 10. It was about a family that has already lived through an unimaginable loss, now marking time toward the next painful anniversary while saying goodbye again. The grief is different, but it is real. And in the Gaudreau family, it is plainly still being felt one loss at a time.
