Dear, my sweet pup.
It has been almost a year, and it is still shocking to think that you are no longer here with us. I remember the day I received the phone call like it was yesterday.
I woke up on Friday, April 1st, 2016, at 8:30 am. I was super excited for my best friend to come visit me from JMU to see the musical I was participating in that night. I was texting my friends in the musical about our show that night and planning April Fool's jokes on my best friend/roommate. I just knew that day was going to be full of surprises, but I wasn't prepared for the one my mom was calling to tell me about.
She was calling to tell me about you, Ty. She told me about how hard it was for you to walk, how you weren't sleeping or eating, and how terribly you were suffering. She then proceeded to tell me that I needed to tell you how much you meant to me and how much I loved you through the phone. I took a deep breath in because I knew exactly what was happening. Through sobs and a shaky voice, I managed to apologize for yelling at you that one time when I was in the 7th grade and you peed on the floor, I told you how much you were loved, and I know you are going to a better place. It's been almost a year and I still don't believe that you're gone.
Not a day goes by that you aren't remembered, Tyson. When the sun shines into the family room at home, the light hits your collar that is on the mantle above where you used to lay, and lights up the room just like you used to. Your leash hung, lonely, on the back of the front door for many quiet months. Your food bucket in the garage remained half-full until the stale, dry food begun to smell and needed to be thrown away. Mom swept up your "puppies", or piles of white hair that you shed, for months after you crossed the bridge. I still find white dog hairs on my clothes I haven't touched since you've been gone. When I visit home, and I can't sleep at night, I'm almost positive I can hear your paws patting against the hardwood floors. Just like how Mom used to tell you when you'd be underfoot in the kitchen "you're everywhere, dog!", you really are everywhere.
Point is, Tyson, that I miss you so much. I miss when I was 6 years old and you'd jump on my bed and sleep at the foot of my bed. I miss when would chase the train that ran through the backyard of our old house and bark at my brother and I as we jumped on the trampoline. I miss when you would lick the tears off of my face when I cried. I miss when you would bark at me as I sang at the top of my lungs in my bedroom. I miss you wagging your tail every time you saw us walk through the door. I even miss your flakey, rough, black bald patch that went from the middle of your back to the tip of your tail because you chewed all of the hair off.
To quote the "Rainbow Bridge" poem, "Then you cross the Rainbow Bridge together, never to be separated again." There will be a day were I get to see you again, Ty. Until that day, play long, eat tons of treats, roll around in the grass, and be the good boy we all knew you as.
