Through all of it, he never turned away from me.
Not once.
He didn’t grow angry. Didn’t resist. Didn’t lose that steady, quiet trust that made everything harder, not easier. Even on his worst days, when his legs trembled and his body seemed too heavy for him to carry, he would still make his way over to me in the morning, his tail tapping softly against the floor like a promise he refused to break.
I’m still here.
That’s what it always felt like he was saying.
And for a while, that was enough.
There were good days, too—the kind that sneak up on you and make you believe, just for a moment, that you’ve outrun the inevitable. One morning, I found him sitting by the front door, watching the street with a kind of alertness I hadn’t seen in weeks, his eyes brighter, his posture stronger.
I stood there with my coffee in hand and laughed, a short, disbelieving sound that turned into something closer to relief.
“Thought you were done with me,” I said.
His tail hit the floor in that slow, familiar rhythm.
