what's left in the grief?

my little man

TW// pet loss, family loss

..

I feel the same way I did in the months leading to Scruffy running away. Something is wrong, and I'm going to lose soon. One of my grandparents. They're in their early 70s, and their parents lived to their 90s. But it feels the same.

Something is wrong.

Just like with my little man, I'll spend my months crying now, trying to prepare myself for it, and secretly cross my fingers behind my own back, and pray to whoever is out there I'm wrong this time.

God I hope I'm wrong.

The months of hoping to myself scruffy wasn't gone. Sharing images of my lost dog, begging someone to find him. To tell me he's okay. That even if he's gone, they found him before, and made him comfortable before he went.

But deep down, I know he went to the woods. He left while my dad was gone, and I was now in texas. I'd like to think he didn't want us to find him when he was gone. Neither of us could bare that pain. We can barely handle knowing that, in truth, we will never know how he went.

But in my mind, I hope some old woman found him roaming the street, called him, and somehow even upon deaf ears, he heard her, and walked through her door.

I hope she laid out a big fluffy blanket for him, and he curled up next to her, or at her feet in the blanket. And just before he went, I hope he looked up at her as she stroked him, and beyond those cataracts, he saw me. I hope he left with love, and the smell of dinner cooking from the other room.

But I will never know.

But I prefer it to the woods. So much could have happened out there, and thinking about those options decimates me.

I'm glad I drove back one more time before I moved to Texas. I knew if I left without seeing him one more time, I'd regret it. Somehow I knew it was the last time I'd kiss that nose. The last time I felt that oily fur against my hands. The last time I'd feel him curl up to sleep behind my legs on the couch.

But sometimes, even now, on the worst nights, when I can't stop crying, and I beg God for one more day with my little man, I'll feel him curled up behind my legs once more.

But when I reach down to pet him,

He isn't there.