I brought Daisy home believing I was preparing for an ending, trying to make peace with loss on my own terms. Instead, she became a quiet invitation back to living. She didn’t heal our history or erase the words Daniel and I had never learned to say; she simply asked us to show up for something fragile and finite, side by side. In measuring out her pills, in timing her walks, in learning the rhythm of her labored breathing, we were also relearning the rhythm of each other’s presence.
When Daisy died with her head on his knee and her paw resting against my wrist, she bound us into a single, unbearable moment of honesty. Grief didn’t feel cleaner or easier, but it felt shared. In the echo of her absence, the house was still, but no longer empty. She hadn’t saved us. She’d reminded us we were still saveable.
