This afternoon was better than this morning.   This morning I was still flashing back to the moment I discovered Claudia had been hit. Yesterday it was happening to me constantly.   Now its much less often, and when it happens it isn’t as excruciatingly painful.   I’m still grieving badly over losing her, but it’s not overwhelming me so often.   Perhaps tonight I’ll actually be able to rest in bed without repeatedly flashing back to it.

Over the past couple days I’ve watched the few small drops of blood on my front porch slowly fading away.   They fell from her as I carried her away from the street and to my house.   When I cradled her up off the street I could feel that her body was all broken up inside.   I remember I kept trying to be careful so as to not to hurt her more, as if it would have made any difference at that point, but I was out of my mind.   I’m still not altogether right.

On the front porch was a little pet bed I’d bought for her, not knowing if she’d like it but figuring I could try something else if she didn’t.   She had a spot on the front porch she liked and so I put the bed there and the next time I looked out she was fast asleep in it.

She loved that thing.   I eventually bought another one just like it for the living room, and of course she seldom used that one, preferring instead a spot on the floor just in front of the sofa.

So I took her broken body over to the little bed she loved and laid her down in it.   Then I went inside and got a cloth and covered her with it, and that was how I eventually delivered her to the pet cemetery for cremation, bed and all.   When I came back home I noticed the blood on the porch and I couldn’t bear to clean it up because it felt like erasing her and I wasn’t ready to start picking up all her things inside the house and putting them away, let alone tend to the damage outside.   Some neighbors kindly washed off the street for me.

A few more days and those little spots on the porch floor will probably be gone.   Maybe by then the worst of this will have passed too.