Chelsea

by Barbie K.
(Methuen, Mas)

I miss my dog.

Fourteen years is a long time to have a dusty brown dog lying at your feet, greeting you at the door, walking beside you in the yard, resting her chin on your knee when you're sad.

I don't understand how my time with her can be over, how all the memories of her fly through my mind in a quick flash; in one instant she's a 4 week old puppy muscling her way through her siblings to get to the side of the pen to meet me, and in the next she's a tired old shell of a dog with cloudy, sad, tired eyes that tell me life's just not that fun anymore.

I know in time my sadness will fade and all my thoughts of her won't be colored with thoughts of loss. I know that all the memories in between the beginning and the ending will be what I'll think of, but right now all I can think of is something my aunt said at my uncle's funeral a few years ago...

"It all goes by so fast."

What's hard is that I keep hearing her and seeing her...out of hope or out of habit, I'm not sure. But it's a jarring process when I have to remind myself, again, that she's gone.

There are a handful of people in my life who know what Chelsea meant to me, and they understand that losing her is one of the biggest things I've ever gone through. Writing this is the most I've said on the subject. I haven't even been able to come close to explaining how it feels to be without her.

So if you're one of those people who understands, thank you. Thanks for understanding the time it will take me to put it all in perspective; she was a dog, it was her time, she was loved beyond love.