I need to write.

I need to write and write...even though I can't feel most major appendages on my body. even though everything i see is blurred by the constant tears beading in my eyes just before they tumble down, stinging streaks into what used to be my face but now feels more like wet sticky dangling noodles of skin.

I lost someone today. Someone I've known almost 16 years.

She was old, and aching, but she was familiar to me, a constant unconditional force of love. She was one of my first expressions of independence. We weren't allowed to have pets at our rental house, but I brought her home anyway. My mom protested, but I stood firm. You see, only two months before I had lost my high school best friend in a drunk driving accident. It was a tangly mess. I was with her that night, although I wasn't there when she crashed. I followed her, and made sure she made it where she was headed safely, but she at some point decided to leave there and that was the end. But, that's a different story.

This story is about a friend who never stopped loving me.

She was only 5 weeks when I picked her out of the litter. Mark and I had only been seeing each other for four months or so. She had one blue eye, and one brown eye so I named her Indigo. She was half Llaso, half poodle. She was so, so soft. Bunny soft. When she was a pup I took her everywhere in my purse. This was way before the designer dogs of the stars. I took her to bars where I worked the door, no one ever new. I took her in the mall, I took her everywhere.

We drove through McDonald's once upon a dream when life was Dr. Pepper, Quarter Pounder with cheese's and a pack of Marlboro lights, and I'd order her her own cheese burger, hold the pickle. She was fiesty, sassy and she told all the other dogs how to behave. Yep, she was mine.

She used to lick everyone's hands. It was terribly gross and terribly loving all the same. A long, long time ago and yet yesterday it seems, she would run everywhere, and play tug of war with one of Mark's socks. She used to love socks. She would bury them under air and wonder how we ever found them. In the end, she stayed within two feet of me most of the time, as if I was the only sock left in her stash. I was her home away from home, I was her seeing eye-person. I laid with her off and on all day today. Comforting her (so I thought), loving on her. I watched her last night walking around in the back yard, and I could see her imagining what it would be like if she could just peel off her fur coat and fly away. I could truly see her rising as she stared into the depths of the sky calling for her accompany.

My heart is broken.

When we told the kids tonight, they sort of acted ok at first, then Gabe so quietly wispered to me "if we could please pray for Indigo." I said of course, and we prayed. We thanked God for Indigo. Her life. That she was so, so soft, and that she loved us more than we'd ever know. We told him we loved her, but we loved Him more and we needed Him to be bigger than us because we felt so small.

And we all mourned deeply. Loudly. Honestly.

I think it may have been the first real time I have ever experienced prayer at all.

She's been gone exactly six hours and two minutes, and I want her back with all the human selfishness she understood and loved anyway.

Thank you, Indigo. For teaching me how to love.