It's Time...

I think about her when I put my two feet on the floor in the morning. When I tuck myself in at night. When I pull up the driveway. When I open the front door. When I come up the basement stairs. When I sit on the porch. When I walk to the garden. When I walk anywhere in the yard. When I make pop corn. When I make eggs. When I make dinner. When I fill the dishwasher. When I empty the dishwasher. When I get the mail. When I walk over a culvert (she used to love going in one end and out the other). When I hang laundry on the line outside. When I see her short gray hairs still on the passenger's side door and her nose marks on the window.


But Sydney says it's time. And Time says it's time...to move on. I've vacuumed up her hair, mopped away her footprints, scrubbed up the sludge from her mouth which stained the slate floor every time she ate. I've washed the drool from the bed sheets, packed away the wet food she didn't eat, folded up her collar. Everyone says it gets easier with time. And I will trust that because they've gone through it before. But forgetting is something I refuse to do.



So Sydney, Paul Bunyan and I went on an adventure yesterday to honor our bestest buddy.


To buy Liebe a tree. So we won't ever never forget.



It needed to be something sweet. Well, because she was.




There were lots of good choices.




But Sydney kept going back to the pears.




And I found this fitting.




I also found it fitting that you need three of them so they will pollinate each other. So Liebe will have three trees planted in her honor because she was that much of a love. And we'll have three times the juicy fruit to remember her by.

And now dear readers, that will be all about Liebe. I thank you to all who have given hugs and words to help and pictures to remember and advice about how to fill the hole she has left. I thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my heart, especially to one of the anonymous commenters who said that our animals shepherd us through certain eras of our lives. When we are ready to turn the corner and make it on our own....they let us go.

I don't know if I'll ever be ready to ever fully make it on my own but Liebe helped me get really really really close.