The space between my heartbeats

There’s a quiet place just inside the front entryway where the afternoon sun lays golden across the floorboards like a memory you can still feel. That was Abby’s spot. She wasn’t just a dog. She was a soul stitched to mine.

Abby, with her warm brown eyes and the softest golden fur, used to wait there every single day. Rain or shine, tail still or swaying, she’d press her chin gently on the door frame and watch the world outside. But what she was really watching for… was me.

She had been through more in her short life than most. At just a year and a half old, cancer came like a thief in the night. Two surgeries. Five rounds of chemotherapy. Her fur fell like autumn leaves, her once-silky coat replaced by fragile patches of skin. I would sit beside her then, heart clenched tight, whispering promises into her ears promises that she could stay. That we weren’t giving up.

It took a year. A year of slow walks, spoon fed meals, and countless moments where her eyes said “I’ll try if you will.” And she did. She came back. Her fur grew in again, paler than before, but still kissed by sunlight. She lived. She loved. She waited by that door like clockwork for the next nine years.

And then…
Cancer came again. This time it didn’t knock. It simply walked in.

At age ten, Abby’s body began to fade, but her spirit, my God, her spirit, never did. She still waited by that front entryway, every single day, even when she could no longer stand. I’d find her there, her head resting against the doorframe, as if holding it up with her love. Waiting. Always waiting. And then one evening, she wasn’t there.

There’s an ache now in the front hallway where her warmth used to live. But sometimes, when the light hits just right, I swear I see her shape in the dust, her shadow in the shine of the floor.

Because grief doesn’t shout, it whispers. It lives in the space between my heartbeats. Where Abby still waits. And in that space, she will always be… home.