Sara

Sara

By Amy J. Cooper

February 21, 2010

I still remember the first time I laid eyes on her, though it was years ago.  I was staring down a long hallway to a window high in the wall where the sun was perfectly lined to cast dancing shadows on the yellow-tiled floor.  Suddenly realizing I was not alone, my eyes dropped down to land into hers where they were held captive for years since.  She tip-toed towards me in a way I have only seen in the wild, a soft gait, graceful, yet primitive.  She crossed the floor so swiftly I feared I was intended as her lunch.  She stopped when she reached me, her eyes dug deep into my soul. I remember thinking, “Ah, there you are,” like one would say to a loved one who had wandered off and gotten lost perusing the self-help books in a shopping mall bookstore. 

I barely knew her when she moved in with me.  Some said I was crazy.  I guess I didn’t care about their snide remarks, because more than anything I felt sorry for them.  If they had ever truly fallen in love, if they had ever known a love as pure as ours, they would understand.  Those sad saps are laughing at me now, though. 

Now….now….yes, even now I can still smell the musty scent of her being.  I can still feel the warmth of her body as she would sit next to me ever so quietly taking in the night, the moon, the songs of the crickets and the cry of the loon.  I can almost reach out and touch her, the memory, the fragrance, so vivid.  A love like ours will always last, no matter how painful it is to my heart to know that she is gone. 

She is gone…gone…gone.  In one moment she was there in front of me, telling me stories with her eyes.  And in the next second her life drained out of her and she softly fell to the floor, reaching out to me, still saying she loved me with the last of her breaths.  I can still hear her, still smell her, and still feel her thoughts in mine.

Her thoughts in mine fill me with love, peace and grieving every day still.  They always will.  Forever a prisoner of her being I can only dream of the day I am with her again.  It is the thing that keeps me going.  It is the thing that protects me from any fear of death.  And as painful as this is today, to stand here without her by my side; as painful as it is to know that it will never be right in my heart…in my soul…again, I go on.  I move on.  I love again. 

I love again, yes.  But yet I never stop loving her.  One day, my little Sara – my little husky mix with the powerful tail and the big brown ears and eyes like cool muddy ponds in the heat of the summer…one day, we will be together again.