The Morning After My Dog Died
The morning after you die, the world will still wake up. The sun you loved so much will rise on the horizon. The birds you liked to watch will still be chirping around the balcony. The flies you hated with all your might will still be buzzing, unable to find their way out of the window. I will contemplate if it’s even worth it to get up from bed, while I’ll replay my mom’s words in my head: “Well, at least you can go on vacation now. You no longer have to worry about him.”
It won't make sense to leave the house when it’s not your excited face and uncontrolled body wiggles that’ll greet me when I return home. But I will leave the bed and go out anyway because I’ll have to.
Home without you will be simply too silent. No tapping of your paws on the hard ground. No soft woofs when you hear your least favorite neighbor coming up the hallway stairs.
When I come home in the evening, after a day of failed distractions, I will not put your cushion away. I will not empty your water bowl. I will not clean your paw prints off the floorboards. Not right away. Just in case you are still present. In some way. In some form.
I will refuse to give you, even the echo of you, the feeling that you are no longer welcome here.
Your soft snores bring me back to the present. You are still alive. Alive and well and asleep next to me. And I should not worry about the first morning after you die. But maybe if I prepare, it will kill me less: The morning after my dog died.