Paw Prints

I went to look for Maggie, I was missing her so. I didn’t realize it was three years since she left me – just a month after I said goodbye to Whisper. My two loves reunited across the Rainbow Bridge.

I didn’t know if I could find it at all, but I reasoned that everything from the bedroom went in last, and might be visible in the front. I drove to the storage locker I’ve been renting for the past year, and pulled open the door. I looked at my belongings stacked one piece on top of another. The garage goes back 20 feet. It’s 10 feet wide and 8 feet high.1,600 cubic feet. Is that the volume of my life? As if you could measure your life that way. When I think of my boxes of family photos stored all the way in the back (they went in first) it reminds me of a scene from the X-Files, which I used to be obsessed with, where a box of alien remains is buried in some government storage warehouse so no will find the evidence of proof of extraterrestrials. The camera pulls out and you can see how tiny the box is amidst rows and rows of files upon files. Like the universe when you see the Earth or Sun from millions of miles away and it looks like a white dot. Or a person that would appear as an insignificant speck.

I looked at the smaller boxes stacked in the front of the space atop empty plastic bins. I reasoned it would have been in a moving box from the bedroom desk where it had sat since that September. This was at the beginning of the pandemic when they would not let you come inside the emergency vet building. I couldn’t even go in to be with her. They took her carrier inside, and then later – when I decided to let her go – they brought her back to me so I could say goodbye and I love you.

One box was marked “Bedroom Desk Books.” I’d used orange duct tape for the bedroom boxes, meticulously labeling and color coding the boxes by room, and noting detailed contents. But as I got closer to the move out date, I was short-handing the descriptions on the labels.

I got a small step stool that was leaning against the opposite wall, and I climbed up to a bin that held scissors and packing tape, so I could re-seal the box if wasn’t the one. I moved the ladder to where the boxes were stacked above me, and removed the two smallest boxes I could reach. I could see inside the end of one box, where the cardboard hand grip exposed the objects inside. I could see a wooden bookend, and I knew it had come from the bookcase, and not the desk. I chose the other box.

I slit the tape and looked inside. Resting on top were my two little stuffed toys I’d had since I was an infant: a white lamb, and a pink kitten. Both were threadbare and well-loved, when I discovered them tucked inside a hanging shoe holder inside a closet in the small bedroom in Grandma’s house. I’d taken them out years ago, and always kept them in the bookcase in my bedroom. Underneath, I spied a small cardboard box. That was it. I’d found her on the first attempt. Eureka! I placed my hand on the box gently for a moment. Then I taped up the moving box with the roll of orange duct tape I’d grabbed from the bin with the scissors. I put the other box back, reorganized the items I’d moved, put the scissors and tape back, and put the step stool back in its place. I pulled down the door, making sure to secure the padlock.

I put the tote box in my trunk and drove off. She was with me now and soon I’d reunite her with Whisper.

I miss my girl, and my good boy. Now they are playing with fuzzy balls, and chasing the stick end of a feather wand toy, watching the squirrels and birds outside the window. They are sleeping curled up on the blue fleecy afghan on Mom’s bed, while she takes a nap.

I put the two small wooden urns next to each other for a while, so they could be together, and so I could see them side by side. All that remains is dust, their paw prints and the unconditional love we shared.