I still stay close to you

  still stay close to you.

Not with my hands...

Not with my footsteps...

But with every quiet piece of my heart that still whispers your name.

Sometimes I wonder if you can feel it.

If, somewhere beyond the Rainbow Bridge, you know that I still think about you before the sun comes up.

That I still say goodnight to the empty space where you used to sleep.

That even now, after all this time, my love hasn't learned how to leave you behind.

There are days when I hear another dog's collar jingle...

And my heart turns before my mind can stop it.

For one tiny moment, I forget that heaven borrowed you.

I expect to see your bright eyes.

Your happy tail.

Your familiar little smile that always made an ordinary day feel like home.

People say life keeps moving.

And it does.

The seasons change.

The flowers bloom.

The years quietly pass.

But love has never cared about calendars.

It simply stays.

Just like I do.

I still stay close to you every time I tell someone about the wonderful dog who changed my life.

Every time I smile at a puppy.

Every time I stop to help a frightened animal.

You are still shaping my heart, even from a place my eyes cannot reach.

Sometimes, when evening settles softly over the world, I sit outside beneath the first stars.

The breeze brushes across my face so gently that I close my eyes.

For just a second...

It feels like the warmth of your fur against my hand.

I don't know if that's memory.

Or heaven.

Maybe love doesn't need us to know the difference.

In my dreams, you are always whole again.

No pain.

No slowing down.

You run through endless green meadows with the same joy you carried into my life, then stop and look back at me.

Not because you're waiting in sadness...

But because you know we'll never stop belonging to each other.

Until the day I hear your paws running toward me again, I will keep carrying you in everything I do.

I'll speak your name with love.

I'll remember the sound of your happy footsteps.

I'll treasure every muddy pawprint you ever left on my floor...

And every invisible one you left on my soul.

Distance may separate our worlds for now...

But it has never separated our hearts.

So if heaven is listening...

Tell my best friend something for me.

Tell them...

I still stay close to you.

I always will.

And when the day finally comes that we're together again...

It will feel as though we were never apart at all.