I dropped a piece of ham on the floor on Saturday night and almost didn't reach down to pick it up off the floor, thinking "Oh, no worries. CoCo will... oh."
Now who's going to eat the Cheerios off the floor? Who is going to eat the toast crusts? I mean, Dex will take care of some of that, but he leaves pieces. And crumbs. And I might have to, you know, SWEEP. Or vacuum.
Dex broke what's left of my heart Saturday. He was playing in the living room and just suddenly stopped, looked at me, and did his sign for CoCo. Then signed "help." And then, "CoCo." And I had to tell him, without sobbing, that CoCo wasn't here. Sorry, kiddo. Your sister won't be coming back. Now here - play with this nice dump truck.
I keep looking around the house expecting to see a brown fuzzy dog. Sunday I was sitting on the deck and thinking "We should let CoCo out here with us... Oh. Never mind." Every time I lock the door at night, or unlock it in the morning, I think of her - why is there not a brown dog at my feet, asking to go out or to come in? Oh. That's right.
Our family has lost more than its fair share of cats and dogs in my life, but they were family dogs. They were never MINE. Or they were mine, but Mom and Dad got to take care of them while I was away at school. And they died while I was away. So nothing has ever hit me this hard. I can't look at a picture of her without crying. Fortunately, most of the CoCo pictures were put away before we started showing the house.
Slowly, the reminders are being cleaned and put away. The dog dishes. The dog bed. The dog food in the fridge.
One of these days I'll stop crying.
We don't have tons of photos of CoCo with both of us. This one is one of my favorites. It's from about this time, Easter, in 2003. At Sweet Briar.
1 comment:
Much the same with me. I keep looking over to the empty spot where her dog bed used to be.
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