I’m Right Here, Mama.
I keep expecting that I will feel better with time. Dogs die. It happens. Time will pass and I will feel better. I will feel happy about the time we spent together.
The other day, I was feeling so much better that I forgot, momentarily, that Xena wasn’t here. I looked around and said, out loud, “Where are you?” As if she might suddenly appear.
And then I did the unthinkable. I answered myself the way Xena would have answered.
I responded as if I were Xena, in that silly voice I’d used for ten years to “be” Xena, to represent her thoughts. It was the voice I used when the boys were little, when they needed to understand how a dog might feel if you pulled her tail. It was the voice I used when we were riding in the car, when she had her head hanging out the window, “showing” the boys what was out there while they giggled in the backseat.
It was the voice I used when Xena was excited – as she usually was – to express (and add to) “her” excitement. Eventually Xena learned that when I used that voice, it had something to do with her – and it always made her tail wag.
“Where are you?” I asked, moving “her” pillow on the couch, so she would have it where she wanted it, just as soon as she returned.
“I’m right here, Mama,” Xena said, out of my mouth, before I realized what I was doing. “I’m always right here.”
Because that’s what she would have said, if she’d been here. Because she was always right here. Right next to me. ALWAYS.
And now she’s not.
And then I broke down sobbing again. Because she’s not here. She can’t be here anymore. And she belongs here.