Forever in My Heart

This past week has been an emotional one for me as Facebook shows me my memories from a year ago. These photos are what would end up being the last pictures and memories I would end up having of and with my sweet girl, Lilo. 12 months. 52 weeks. 365 days. Today marks 1 year without my best friend. Not a single day has gone by that I have not thought about her. Some days I miss her so much that it still brings tears to my eyes. I often made the comment that she would live forever but in her final weeks here with us, I knew in my heart that our time was quickly running out.

I remember the day so vividly and it is something that I have shared with very few people. That Friday night, Lilo had another seizure. This would be her third in about a month or so. With each seizure her physical appearance seemed to age by years. They were taking a major toll on her body. When Lilo had seizures she would spend the next several hours wandering around seeming disoriented. She would bump into furniture and find herself stuck in places, like under the bar stools or under the desk. I stayed out in the living room with her that night where neither one of us got much sleep.

The next day, Saturday, her and I spent the whole day together while Mark was at work. We took a bunch of short naps and in between, we hung out together outside in the sunshine. She walked circles around the outside of the house while I painted some furniture in the garage for Luke's nursery. She would check in with me with each lap she took. I washed the car while she remained close by, carefully avoided the water hose.  I even mustered the strength, at 31 weeks pregnant, to give her a bath in the tub that afternoon. We spent the rest of the day relaxing inside and snuggling. We had a great day, just me and my sweet girl.

That evening was like most of our evenings during this season. Mark and I had gone to bed and Lilo paced around the house for most of the night, as she often did, with her nails clinking on the hard floors. One of us would get up every few hours to let her out to use the bathroom, a symptom of her late stage kidney disease that we had been managing. This particular night when I woke to let her out, I noticed she had pooped in several spots and tracked it around the house. I let her outside so Mark and I could clean up the mess. She was used to going out by herself at night and would often walk around the house to be let in through the front door. As we cleaned, I noticed Lilo had come back to the back door ready to come in. We had a few more spots to clean so we left her out for a minute or two longer. When I went back to the door to let her in, she wasn't there. I assumed she had just made her nightly yard patrol trek to the front door, but she never came around. We both grabbed our shoes and head out to find her. Every once in a while she would wander to the empty lot beside ours, so we looked there first. Nope. We went back in to grab our flashlights and then checked neighbor's yards, ditches, the edge of the water behind our house, drainage pipes. We had literally saw her just a couple of minutes ago, where in the world could she have gone? What made it worse was that her hearing wasn't that great anymore and often times couldn't hear us calling for her. I started to feel panicked. Mark hopped in his car to drive around our small, yet very open neighborhood. I texted some friends who immediately headed over to our house to help. We drove along the edge of the woods, out to the main road, down the road a mile each way, and rechecked all of the places we had already checked more than once. Nothing. I knew in my heart she couldn't have wandered too far, after all she did not move very quickly these days. But where in the world was she?! After hours of searching tirelessly, we went back inside to try and rest with plans to go back out in the morning.

I couldn't sleep so I stayed out in the living room praying that she would walk up to the back door. Oh how I wish I could go back in time and let her in a few hours prior when she was standing there. I dozed on and off until the first sign of daylight. We went back out and continued our search, still hopeful that we would find her stuck somewhere. Our wonderful neighbors joined in to help. We rode around in a truck to the undeveloped part of our neighborhood. We road around the edge of the treeline looking for any signs of her. It wasn't until we were driving though a neighbor's yard, along the edge of the water, when I asked him to stop. I saw something in the water and was sure that it was just a fallen tree or something but I had to rule it out. As I walked closer, my heart sank. What I saw was not a tree, it was my sweet sweet girl floating ever so peacefully in the water. I completely lost it. My amazing neighbors took it upon themselves to retrieve her body from the water and bring her home to us. They then came to help us bury her. The love and generosity we were shown that day is something I will never forget.

 That day, 1 year ago, is to date the worst day I have ever personally experienced. The day seemed to drag on forever. For weeks, I cried more tears than I thought it was possible to cry. Hours upon hours we had searched for miles and she had never even left our yard. Lilo had never shown any interest in the water behind our house. My only thought is that she wandered back there in the dark in her disoriented state and slipped in. There was no way she was strong enough to swim. My hope is that, in her already weakened state, she did not struggle and passed quickly. I will never unsee that image I have of her and it's difficult not to think about how things could have gone differently that night.

Whether she knew what she was doing or not, I believe God did. I know Lilo did not have much time left and I was already questioning what quality of life she currently had. I think that God knew that I wouldn't be able to make the difficult decision that was most likely heading our way. She was old. She was tired. She was weak. She stayed loyal through it all. I think this was His way of letting her go peacefully without the build up of having to say goodbye to each other. I have to believe that. For 12 years, Lilo took care of me just as much as I took care of her. The timing of when she left, just weeks before welcoming a baby into our lives, can't be a coincidence. She has served her life's purpose and it was time to go.

I will forever have a Lilo sized void in my heart that can only be filled with wonderfully sweet memories of her and I. I am thankful to have many. 💕