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texchanI just washed and packed away Tex's last water dish. The one on the second floor ... the one he used to drink out of all the time. I would hear him down there every night, dog tags clinking, toenails clicking on the linoleum floor in the kitchen, and, then, I would hear him drinking. For what seemed like hours. I would lie awake listening to him and thinking: "Geez! Is he going to drink the whole damn bowl, or what?!?" (Hey, at 4 in the AM, a person is often given to melodrama.) The thing was, if he did manage to drink the entire bowl of water, I would have to get out of bed and go refill it. Otherwise, he would carry it off, and I would have a devil of a time finding it the next day. He had a habit of stashing it under or behind things.
The thing was, no matter how irritating it was to be awakened by slurpy dog drinking sounds at 4 in the morning, it was comforting, too. It meant that my boy was there, and doing all right. It meant that everything was just fine in my universe -- all right in place, just the way I liked it.
It's been three months since he died, and I just could not pack it away until now. I washed it with soap and hot water, as I had done so many times in the past. I picked up his little mat, on which the bowl had rested. And, I stored them away. When I returned to the kitchen, it was as if he had never been here at all. Nothing is left of him, except for the photographs and the memories in my heart. And, right now, those memories are tinged with such sadness that I don't dare let myself dwell on them.
I can't stop crying. When does this get better? When?
The thing was, no matter how irritating it was to be awakened by slurpy dog drinking sounds at 4 in the morning, it was comforting, too. It meant that my boy was there, and doing all right. It meant that everything was just fine in my universe -- all right in place, just the way I liked it.
It's been three months since he died, and I just could not pack it away until now. I washed it with soap and hot water, as I had done so many times in the past. I picked up his little mat, on which the bowl had rested. And, I stored them away. When I returned to the kitchen, it was as if he had never been here at all. Nothing is left of him, except for the photographs and the memories in my heart. And, right now, those memories are tinged with such sadness that I don't dare let myself dwell on them.
I can't stop crying. When does this get better? When?