Response.

2003-08-01 at 1:30 p.m.

The house is a little emptier now. Coming home, a little quieter. Sleep comes readily (keening and whimpering off and on all day will do that to you), but it's filled with dreams consisting of half-remembered smells and habits that no longer apply (and, mysteriously, that Pink song from the Charlie's Angels sequel--I can't figure that out either). The curtains in our front window are permanently askew in Peek Out Corner, but the empty space is... empty.

When we got home last night from a work thing for Andrew, for a second I listened for the jingle of dog tags from behind the front door before I realized that there wouldn't be any. Jupe's dog tags were on the table in the front hall, on an empty collar.

Our TV crapped out yesterday, so we switched it out with one we'd had in the basement. Andrew left the old TV in the hall. When I got home last night, as I walked to the bathroom in the dark, I swerved at the last second to avoid this big black object and thought, "Don't wake Jupiter!" before I caught myself.

In little ways, the reminders are hitting me that we would always have an empty space in front of the fireplace now.

Everyone has been so thoughtful. Some friends sent flowers, emails, phone calls, reminiscing about Jupiter and offering help, shoulders, anecdotes, sympathy. In the kind-of-freakiest moment of all, I got a call out of the blue from Brad, the building manager of our old building back in Chicago. He and I had been friends, but he and Jupiter had had a special mutual affection for each other. "How's BONEY?" he asked heartily, using his personal nickname for our skinny bone-loving dog.

"I, uh, oh, did you hear?" I stuttered. I couldn't believe the timing--he must have heard? From whom?

Silence. Then, "Oh, no. Is he...? Is there...?"

I told him about Jupiter, his illness, his kidneys, his passing. (It gets a little easier to say each time I say it--I'm not enveloped by the need to tell everything, how much I miss him, every time I say it--not as much, anyway).

"I'm so sorry, Kari." Pause. Then he said, "It's odd, I'd just felt a desire to call you today, just to chat, say hi."

We chatted about Jupiter and the two years we got to share with him, and moved on to other topics, and it felt--normal. Hearing from someone who'd loved Jupiter so much, who had bonded with Jupiter on an almost-daily basis for a year and a half, was like a balm on still-raw wounds.

My heart is battling with my head for whether the call was just amazing coincidence or...

... or what?

There are guilty questions in the back of my head that sneak through at weak moments. Did Jupe really know how much we loved him? Even when we yelled at him for crapping in the middle of the living room? Even when we couldn't take him for mile-long walks every day? Even when some walks were rushed, or we didn't want to get up and let him out at crack-of-my-ass early every morning (even when we did it anway), or we didn't always want to play at midnight? Did he really know?

I'm willing to leave open the question of whether Brad's call was Jupiter's message that he did. And maybe his way of reminding me that the empty spaces aren't really empty--I just need to remember that what fills them isn't necessarily visible with the naked eye.

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