Baby Boy

I wake up and it hits me that a piece of me is gone. I am no longer whole. He would have been stirring beside me. He always got up first and woke me. This time I woke up alone missing the gravity of the other one. I don’t have to worry if he ate, if he is well, if he got outside in time to do his business. My first duty in the morning was taking care of him.

As he aged that became waiting for him to get place to place in his own time. Was he eating? Was he well? Was he happy? Driving down the street on the bike is harder knowing he wasn’t there when I left the house in the morning and won’t be there when I return to a place that is not quite mine anymore because without him it isn’t where I am welcomed the minute I open the door.

I won’t open the front door carefully because sometimes he ran up to close to it and I might hit him.

I don’t have to close the bathroom door. He’ll never get trapped in there again.

I never quite fixed the place where he chewed through the door in a panic because he’d backed up against the door and closed it. I don’t have to close the bedroom door because he kept going in there seeking cat litter which meant I would have to go to the vet next.

I don’t have to arrange the carpets and pads on the floor so that he won’t slip and fall or piss.

When I walk anywhere now, if I slow down, that reminds me of slowing down for him.

I can turn off the autoship; he won’t need that food, the only food he could eat all his life.

I don’t have to close the gate to keep him from the other dogs and I don’t have to help him onto the couch and I don’t have to keep the backseat in the car arranged exactly for him to be comfortable.

I don’t have to worry about the times of the year when it is too hot for him to come in the car and he always wanted to come. He will never cry or whine because I was away too long or I left and returned without taking him with me.

I don’t have to double check the gate in the kitchen or check with him moving the dog bed into view so I can see him if he’s sleeping there while I am in the livingroom.

I don’t have to circle back and make sure I locked the doors to the house to make him safe.

I don’t have to check his water to make sure it’s clean enough.

I don’t have to make sure the cushion outside is clean and available for him.

I don’t have to touch the ground in the summer to see if the sidewalk is too hot for him to walk on. I don’t have to keep him from eating everything he sniffs. I won’t have to walk him early in the morning in the summer because it gets too hot for him to walk.

I don’t have to worry about leaving the front door open to get the mail because he’s not there to shoot through it.

He will never stand outside and give me that stare that I have to interpret because he never learned to speak English.

I don’t have to wonder how and when he learned to make his ears do that when he is confused.

I don’t have to bring him inside because he barks at everything.

He will never lie on my pillow again or require me to sleep in a z shape because of where he needs to sleep.

I can throw away all the Trazadone because he will never be kenneled again.

I will never trip over him or around him again because he had that habit of standing exactly where I needed to walk next.

I will never see him run in the park again or watch him examine every molecule on our walks.

I will never have that battle of wills again when he wants to walk where I didn’t want to go.

I will be haunted by how he looked when I first saw him and agreed to take him home, by the time I saw him for the first time in the back seat, or by how he looked when we walked on the beach together. I will never see him take over the whole bed in a hotel.

I won’t ever have to make sure his babysitters can be trusted.

I won’t share the last of the peanut butter with him anymore.

He won’t ever crawl between you and the back of the couch and fall asleep.

I won’t ever feel him push against you when he dreams. I won’t ever see him sleeping in the sun or crashed out safe, happy, and snoring.

I won’t ever put his harness on him that hung as he aged and winnowed some. I won’t ever walk in the door and see him react happy to see me, certain that one of the first things I will do is take care of him.

I’ll never smell Seamus or feel the way his fur feels. He will never trust me again.

I still have the tooth we extracted shortly after Sydney died and he chipped it on his cage trying to chew his way out on the last day I ever caged him.

I still have the door that is now a solid door without a dog door because he pulled the whole casing out.

I still have the girls that were given to me the week Sydney died who were such a hassle that taking care of them gave me something to do besides grieve and who will do the same thing now--once they stop freaking out because I am freaking out. For the past three days Ronin is making me hand feed her.

She’s stopped that now, but everywhere I turn, I still see you. Remembering how you made my life better makes every day a misery now.