Coming home now will be a little harder knowing your smiling face and wagging tail will not be meeting us at the door. Your nose prints are still on the glass. Somehow we can’t bring ourselves to wash them away.
We have put off our walks because your outside toys are still strewn along the paths: old balls and squeaky toys whose squeaks have long been gone. You were always with us on our walks—running ten feet ahead—smelling the scents of the turkey and deer who had crossed the routes the night before. You loved swimming in the river
even in the dead of the winter.
Everything will be a little harder now because you were part of our lives. You were part of everything from painting (always sleeping on your bed beside the easel when work was in progress) to checking the mail (always ready for a walk anywhere).
We burned your beds and put candles in their spots. We put your favorite indoor toys around the candles: Pinky Winky, Mr Rabbit, your tennis balls, a half-eaten bone and your Christmas present—the one you never saw. You would have liked it. It has a good squeaker.
They say your heart was giving out. I guess you just gave us too much love with it.
Good-bye old girl. We will meet again in Heaven. Somehow dying for us, when our time comes, will be much easier knowing you will be waiting for us on the other side.
Thank you to Pat and Cheryl Fries
for making Brandy a movie star.