Roll-on Tears

I couldn’t get my key to turn in the deadbolt of my apartment, which was just par for the course of the kind of day I was having. I was already feeling guilty for calling it quits an hour early, and all I could think about was this was some kind of sign that I should just turn around and go back to work. My decision was made for me at the last possible moment, when the lock turned, and before I knew it, I was already halfway through the door. I was hot, and sweaty, my hair was soaked, my clothes were stuck to my skin, and about as miserable as you could be. The air was off during the day to save a dime, so my apartment was like a sauna, and smelled like someone started a gym in a speak-easy. “What else?,” I said in my out loud voice to the air you could feel on your face. “You know what?” I answered back, “I just don’t care.” There was nothing else that could go wrong with my day, at that moment.

Wait? I cleared my senses and reconned my environment. Something is wrong? Minnie is always there to greet me, or at the very least after my alarm announcement, “front door open,” would wake her up in my bedroom? She would fly out faster than a speeding bullet, and literally launch herself into my arms to lick my face – manically. “Minnie? Minnie-Me? Minnooshka? You love your daddy?,” I whistled? My heart sunk to the basement of the building, and my entire body was wrought with this penetrating fear. Is this it? Is it time? Minnie was 22 years old, been the only girl I could ever truly rely on for over half my life, and I have been prepared for this for years, but I wasn’t prepared today.

The parking lot wasn’t really crowded, which meant Minnie and I would pretty much have the walk all to ourselves. I took my shirt off because it was a smoking hot day and I wanted to catch some rays on our expedition. Minnie sat quietly (which was not a thing with her) in the passenger seat waiting for the command. “Okay,” I barked, and she shot out of the car like a cannon! As I speed-walked the nature trail, she would be all over the place, on the path, off the path, in the woods, into the stream, but always keeping a close eye on me and constantly circling back around to make sure I was still there? This was our routine through the entire walk, until we neared “the field.” She knew this was where we threw the stick and she would run ahead of me on the path, stop, turn around, and bark at me as if to say, “Hurry up!” Then, she would run to me, stop, turn back around, and run to the edge of the field again, as if to say, “Follow me!” She could not get enough of throw the stick time with her daddy.

This moment, and literally every moment together for the past 22 years flashed through my mind, all at the same time. My bedroom door was shut, and I slowly walked back to her bed in my office, so choked up was I that I could not even say her name. As I went into the office doors and looked under my desk, there she was in her bed all curled up. She looked like she was sleeping, so peaceful and pleased with life. Then, I heard this faint thumping like a tiny drum? It was the same sound she made whenever she was wagging her tail against a pillow on the couch? My heart rose as I thought that was her tail, and my eyes immediately began to well up with tears, hard to tell if from my initial fear, or from tears of joy? I slowly peeked around the end of the bed and saw her tail. It wasn’t moving, and the sound of it had gone. She had passed away, somewhere over the rainbow bridge, I think they call it? Was the sound her ghost? Was it actually her, and if it really was, did I literally walk into the office the very second, she died? I do not remember much after that, I just know I started to cry, and I have never stopped.

She would follow me everywhere I went. I would stand up from my chair in the office and her ears would perk up like a bat, “Where you going?,” as if she were asking. I would look right at her and say, “I’m not going anywhere. I will be right back. Stay here!”, and then she would follow me to wherever I was going (a bit clingy that way). I cannot even remember my life before her, and it seems like all I do nowadays is constantly remember my life with her, even moreso now since she is gone.

A tear can roll for a number of reasons. Its single trait is that it must be a strong enough feeling, about a deep enough emotion, to bring about a physical reaction. I say a reaction, not a response. I wish I could say I responded well to Minnie’s death, but I can’t. I reacted. I wish I could even say that as I am writing this, I have begun to respond, but I can’t. I have never experienced losing even so much as an acquaintance before, let alone my best friend? I am not the same person I was without her. I have never felt so alone. My only saving grace is that I loved her just as wholeheartedly, and unconditionally, as she loved me, every day of her life. No regrets.