Rest in peace, mi amigas

I don’t feel much like blogging today. It has been less than 24 hours now since we had to say goodbye to our beloved doggie, Honey, and this house seems so empty without her. I see her dog bed in the living room, her toys around the house. We keep expecting her to be around the next corner.

Annie was finishing her toast a little while ago and went to give Honey the scraps, an automatic reaction that just reinforces how much our little mookie (one of the millions of nicknames we had for her) was a part of the fabric of our very existence.

I still feel a bit stunned, myself. I don’t think I fully understood the possibilities when we packed her in the car on Sunday night, that it was possible that we’d be without her. But then, as so many friends and readers of this blog have pointed out, we are not without her, will never be without her. She will always be with us.

I know this to be true, because I still occasionally feel the presence of our other dogs — Amstel, who was blind at the age of 2 and had to rely on her feel for the house to get around, and my big, bushy 85-pound lapdog Benny, who like Honey seemed to have a permanent puppy smile even as he reached his final moments at age 14.

Honey’s toys remain where they were on Sunday, strewn across the house where she left them. We probably should clean them up, perhaps place them in a box in a corner where we still can see them (this was my mom’s suggestion — a good one), but I don’t think either of us are ready to do that. It’s still just a bit too raw, too fresh and painful.