Your goodbye stayed open

 Your goodbye stayed open.

That is the strangest part of loving you after loss.

It never felt like a door closed.

It felt like a door was left standing there… half open… still moving a little in the wind.

Because how could a love like yours end in one moment?

How could one last breath, one last kiss on your head, one final whisper of “I love you” be enough to contain a whole lifetime of us?

It wasn’t.

And it still isn’t.

That is why I keep living inside the space you left behind.

Not because I want to stay broken.

But because your goodbye did not come with a clean ending.

It stayed in your bed that I still straighten without thinking.

In the leash I cannot put away.

In the sound I almost hear when the house gets quiet at night and my heart starts listening for your paws again.

Sometimes grief feels less like losing you…

and more like standing in a doorway between two worlds.

One where you were here, warm and breathing, following me from room to room.

And one where I reach down out of habit and touch only air.

I still don’t know how to fully live in this new world.

Part of me is still turned toward the old one, waiting.

Still expecting the collar to jingle.

Still expecting your sleepy eyes to find mine.

Still expecting love to walk back in wearing fur.

Maybe that is what an open goodbye really is.

It is unfinished love.

Not unfinished because you were not loved enough.

But because you were loved so deeply that my soul could not close around the loss all at once.

So it stays open.

In tears that still come without warning.

In the way your name can still undo me.

In the quiet hope that when I dream of you, it is not only memory, but visit.

And somehow… there is comfort in that too.

Because an open goodbye means the bond is still alive.

It means you are not sealed away in the past.

You still reach me.

Through a feather drifting into my path.

Through a star that seems too bright to ignore.

Through the sudden warmth that wraps around me when I am missing you the most. 

I think love like ours does not believe in closed endings.

It stretches.

It lingers.

It waits by the edge of heaven with gentle eyes and patient paws.

So no, your goodbye never really closed.

It stayed open inside me…

like a gate between this world and the Rainbow Bridge.

And one day, when it is my turn to cross, I believe I will find that it was never truly a goodbye at all.

Only love waiting with the door still open.