I Found His Toy Under the Couch. I Sat There for Hours.

I Found His Toy Under the Couch. I Sat There for Hours.

It was supposed to be a normal Sunday afternoon. The kind where laundry hums in the background, the scent of coffee lingers in the air, and the house feels almost too quiet—comfortably so. But then I knelt to fetch the remote I’d dropped, and my hand touched something small and familiar beneath the couch.

It was the red dinosaur.

Not just any dinosaur—his dinosaur.

The one with a bite mark on the tail and a missing eye. The one that roared when you pressed its belly, though now the sound was faint and glitchy. I hadn’t seen it in months. Maybe a year. Maybe longer.

Time does that. It folds in on itself when grief becomes part of your every breath.

I didn’t mean to sit down, not really. But I did. Right there on the floor, legs crossed like I was eight again. I turned the toy over in my hands, tracing its plastic ridges, feeling every scratch, every chip in the paint, and every memory flood in like water through a broken dam.


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He had named the dinosaur “Chompy.” Not very original, but endearingly him. He’d carried it everywhere—to the park, to preschool, even to bed, despite my protests that it was too hard and would hurt his face.

He never cared. Chompy was his buddy. His partner in crime. The one who helped him roar at imaginary monsters and pretend the kitchen was a jungle.

I remember the day we bought it—he was three, and the toy aisle was a battlefield of indecision. But when he saw Chompy, he grabbed it with both arms like he’d found treasure. He didn't even glance at the others.

"This one," he had said, face serious. “He’s mine.”

And he was.


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When he got sick, Chompy came with us to every doctor appointment. Every hospital stay. Every night spent in sterile white rooms under too-bright lights and too-quiet hallways. When the nurses couldn’t get him to sleep, they brought warm blankets, but only Chompy worked.

It was during those months I began to understand the cruel shape of time. How it stretches endlessly when you’re waiting for results, yet sprints past you when you want more of it. We tried everything—treatments, diets, prayers, even silence, which we somehow hoped would change fate.

But it didn’t.

He was five when the world dimmed.

Five.

Too young to understand why he was hurting. Old enough to know he wouldn’t be going home.


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The house hasn’t been the same since. I boxed up most of his toys, gave away clothes, rearranged furniture like somehow shifting the layout would make the emptiness feel different. But some things stayed untouched—like the red dinosaur, which I assumed had been packed away, lost, or maybe taken by some quiet mercy of time.

But it was here. Just under the couch.

Waiting.

Like he had hidden it for me.

As I sat on the floor, the light through the window shifted from gold to blue, casting long shadows across the carpet. The hum of the fridge was the only sound. I pressed Chompy’s belly and heard the weak mechanical roar—a scratchy echo of a little boy's laugh.

That’s when I broke.

Not the kind of sobbing that you can wipe away with a tissue and a shaky breath. The kind that twists in your chest, guttural and silent, because you’re afraid if you make a sound, the walls might collapse with you.

I sat there for hours. Holding that toy like it could bring him back. Like maybe, if I closed my eyes hard enough, I’d hear tiny footsteps down the hall, or his voice asking for juice or for me to read the dinosaur book again.

But there was only the ticking clock, and the ache in my chest, and the weight of something I didn’t know I had buried so deep.


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They say grief gets lighter. That’s not true. You just get stronger, or better at pretending you’re okay. You learn to carry it like a stone in your pocket—small, but always there. Today, that stone felt like a boulder again.

All because of a toy under the couch.

Funny how grief doesn’t always come with anniversaries or birthdays. Sometimes it comes with dust and silence, plastic teeth, and a missing eye.

And when it does, all you can do is sit with it.

And remember.

Note:
“If you’ve ever stumbled upon something that made you stop and remember—thank you for reading. You’re not alone.”