I’ve been thinking a lot about where you are now

 I’ve been thinking a lot about where you are now.

Not in the clinical sense,
not in the way people try to explain it logically—
but in the way my heart imagines it
when the world gets quiet.

I picture you in wide open fields,
the kind that go on forever
with no fences,
no storms,
no shadows waiting at the edges.

Just golden light.
Just soft wind.
Just peace.

In those fields, you’re not limping.
You’re not slowing down.
You’re not fighting time
the way you had to at the end.
Your legs are strong again.
Your breath is easy.
Your spirit is wild and laughing.

I see you chasing the kind of joy
that only dogs understand—
the joy of running simply because you can.
The joy of feeling the sun touch your fur
without it hurting you anymore.

Sometimes I wonder
if you look back toward me
from that meadow of forever.
If you pause for a moment,
ears lifting,
as if you can still hear my voice
calling your name the way I used to.

And maybe you do.
Maybe love echoes farther than we think.

I can’t follow you yet.
I know that.
But the thought of you whole again—
free from pain, free from fear, free from time—
brings a softness to my grief
that I didn’t have before.

If heaven has fields,
I hope they look like the ones you dreamed of
when you stretched your head out the car window,
eyes half-closed,
letting the wind carry your worries away.

I hope you’re running in that feeling
every moment now.

And when my own time comes,
I hope you’ll be the one who finds me—
bounding across those fields without pain,
bright as you ever were,
as if no time has passed at all.

Until then…
run free, my love.
I’ll meet you in the tall grass someday.