Driving home after leaving Isabelle at the hospital for a bone biopsy to confirm what I already know in my heart, I am left with all these feelings with nowhere to put them that might make them go away. I want to cry and cry until somehow the pain stops. Tears burn across my eyes but I don’t let them out. I turn into the driveway. Already my home feels different. I can’t go inside yet so I stop to bring residual summer and fall detritus into the garage. I sweep dead leaves, sand and dirt from the garage floor. I take in pots from the porch, the ones I grew herbs in, dumping the spent dirt into the vegetable garden. I take on the pile of leaves that has wedged itself into a corner between the gate and the house, hoping to remain unnoticed. But I see it. I uncover the hose that is lying like a green snake underneath the brown decaying mass of oak and maple leaves and put it away in the garage as well. I look around my empty yard. Dog toys scattered on the grass. The area under the apple tree where Isabelle dug herself a ditch to lie in during the summer. I would fill it in and she would dig it back, over and over until finally I covered it with grass clippings and she lost interest. Or maybe, the cancer that is now threatening her life, started to ache in her front shoulder, and digging was no longer a pleasure.
I go inside. Even with Archer there it is too quiet. I want Isabelle’s big furry galumphing body to push itself against me, her nose on my hand, her soft brown eyes staring into mine with love.
I want Isabelle back. I want Isabelle to live and not to die. I want the pain in my heart to go away. I want my Isabelle.
