Sometimes I still place my hand against my chest

 Sometimes I still place my hand against my chest…

just to remind myself my heart kept beating after losing you.
Because honestly…
for a while, I didn’t think it would.
You were stitched into the rhythm of my days so completely that when you left, everything inside me felt uneven.
The mornings.
The silence.
Even the air in this house changed.
I still expect to hear your paws following behind me when I walk into another room.
I still glance toward your favorite spot before sitting down, like some part of me refuses to believe it’s empty.
Grief does that.
It keeps love alive in reflexes.
And maybe that’s because real love never fully leaves the body.
It settles deeper.
Somewhere beneath memory.
Beneath thought.
Inside the pulse.
You rest there now.
In the quiet beat that aches a little harder whenever I say your name.
In the sudden warmth that appears when I dream about you.
In the tears that still arrive without warning because my soul remembers what it felt like to be loved by you.
People talk about healing as if it means moving on.
But I don’t want a life that forgets you.
I want a life that carries you gently forward.
So I do.
In tiny ways.
I still speak to your photo sometimes.
I still pause whenever I see dogs that look like you.
I still smile through tears when I remember how your tail hit the wall every time you got excited to see me come home.
Those memories hurt…
but they also keep me alive.
Because loving you changed the shape of my heart forever.
And maybe somewhere beyond the stars, beyond this heavy human grief, there is a peaceful place beneath the Rainbow Bridge.

A quiet meadow where tired old dogs become young again.
Where pain disappears.
Where tails wag freely in golden light.
Maybe you rest there now.
But part of you still lives here too.
Inside my routines.
Inside this home.
Inside the pulse that still whispers your name long after goodbye.
And maybe that is what eternal love really is—
not holding on tightly…
but realizing they never truly left your heart at all.