Today wasn’t a great day

I’m not a morning person.  Wandering the field while puppy chews sticks and eats grass and taking stones out of his mouth, and leaves out of his mouth, and waiting for him to be motivated to poop, while my feet get wetter by the second and my pant legs are wet and I need to pee and please dear GOD will you just poop, for crying out loud?  is not my idea of a fun way to start the day.  Nor is wandering around the house eating everything in sight and playing with empty plastic pots and digging holes and jesus mary and joseph, I need my coffee, this is not fun!

Sigh.  This too shall pass.

The field.   Max’s meadow.  His tree, where he rolled and dug and sniffed baby bunnies but didn’t bother them, and got the zooms, and tore around – all of these are reminders of my sweet, beautiful boy.    When he was young, he would chase me as I mowed that field.  When he got older, he would just watch, and when I was done, would run out, zoom around, roll in the piles of cut grass, eat the clumps that fell off the mower – MAX, YUCK, LEAVE IT!!!!!!!!!! – the one thing he would NEVER ever drop.   His paws would be green from the grass.   And I would laugh and tell him, “look at what Mommy did!”  and he’d run up the sand mound and zoom back down and around me and I’d laugh.

It’s hard to go out there now.   It’s hard to stand under the branches of his tree and not see him there.    Some days, it’s not so bad.  Some days, I think of him rolling on his back in the grass, and I smile.  Today wasn’t one of those days.  And today was the day that Maverick wanted to go there, over and over, and sit, just sit beneath the branches of that tree and look down the hill.

I’m not supposed to be grieving – we have a puppy, everything is supposed to be fine again.   I’m not supposed to miss my boy.   But I do.  With every breath, I want him back.   I want him well, and happy, and running down that hill after a deer, and rolling in the grass under his tree.

I want him back.