I was only going to choose 60 photos.
That was the plan.
Apparently I have learned absolutely nothing about myself, because after looking through a few more folders today, 60 became 86.
Eighty-six photographs of Blitz.
Eighty-six tiny pieces of nearly sixteen years that somehow still don’t feel like enough.
And yes, I selected most of them today when I was probably technically supposed to be working. In my defense, Lovable wasn’t being Hateable and was successfully handling my spreadsheets, so I found myself with a little unexpected free time.
I used it wisely. 😏
Today I finally finished choosing the photographs for Blitz’s memorial album. I put all 86 into a Google Photos album and shared it with my family, and I’ll share that link here too:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/NQLMCh9zdw8A4ZcB7
Looking through them all together was something I wasn’t entirely prepared for.
Not because it destroyed me.
Because, surprisingly, it didn’t.
It made me smile.
There were still moments when that familiar ache grabbed my heart, of course. I don’t think that’s going anywhere for a while. But there was warmth there too. That fuzzy, wonderful feeling that comes when you stumble across a memory you had forgotten you were carrying.
And holy shit, did that dog have a life.
My son and daughter grew up with Blitz.
There are photographs where they’re still children themselves, standing beside this little black-and-white dog who none of us could possibly have known would become such an enormous part of our family’s history.
Then the kids get taller.
Their faces change.
The years move forward.
Life changes around us.
And Blitz is still there.
My mom couldn’t believe it when she was reminded just how far back Blitz’s legacy stretched. She called this the end of an era.
She’s right.
It was an amazing, beautiful, loving era.
And I was so fucking lucky to live in it.
I’ve ordered a beautiful leather-bound photo album for the prints. It holds 4×6 photographs, but what sold me were the writing pages woven throughout it. I don’t want this to be just a collection of pictures. I want to write things down.
The chaos stories.
The places we went.
The things she did.
The little details that seem impossible to forget right now but that time has an awful habit of quietly stealing from us.
I want somebody to be able to open that book years from now and not just see Blitz.
I want them to know her.
Meanwhile, her memorial corner is slowly becoming exactly what I hoped it would be.
We’ve already burned completely through several candles and replaced them with new ones. Her shadow box is there. I’ve chosen photographs for the wall surrounding it, and the framed displays will be ready soon. The album will live there too once all 86 prints arrive.
At first I worried that creating an entire space devoted to her might make the grief harder.
Instead, her corner feels alive.
Not alive in the painful way where I’m pretending she isn’t gone.
Alive with her.
It’s warm. It’s sweet. It’s filled with memories. There are candles glowing where she used to sleep nearby. There are photographs of the dog she was when her legs were strong and her eyes were bright and she could run beside my children while they were still children.
There is evidence everywhere that Blitz was here.
That matters to me.
Because lately I’m beginning to understand something about grief.
The goal isn’t to eventually be able to look at her photograph and feel nothing.
I don’t ever want that.
I want exactly what happened today.
I want to look at 86 photographs when I originally intended to choose 60 because apparently restraint has left the fucking building. I want to remember something I’d forgotten and yell for Marcelo to come look. I want my kids to find pictures of themselves with the dog who helped raise them. I want my mother to remember just how long this beautiful era really lasted.
I want to laugh.
I want to ache a little.
I want to miss her.
And I want that missing her to slowly become less about the terrible day when we said goodbye and more about all the extraordinary ordinary days that came before it.
The walks.
The adventures.
The family pictures.
The holidays.
The ridiculous moments.
The quiet ones.
The years when none of us were thinking about endings because Blitz was simply there, exactly where she belonged.
Someday, Maisie will be old enough to look through this album.
She won’t remember Blitz herself.
But she’ll know her.
She’ll see photographs of her mom and uncle growing up beside this beautiful dog. She’ll read the stories I wrote between the pictures. She’ll know that long before she arrived, there was a stubborn, loyal, extraordinary black-and-white girl who watched over this family for nearly sixteen years.
And maybe that’s what my mom’s words really mean to me.
The end of an era isn’t the end of its story.
We get to keep telling it.
So I have 86 photographs coming.
I have a leather album waiting for them.
I have blank pages waiting for stories.
And in one little corner of my home, candles keep burning beside the physical pieces of a life that changed mine forever.
It still hurts.
God, sometimes it hurts terribly.
But now I can stand there and smile, too.
And that feels like progress.
An amazing, beautiful and loving era ended.
But what an era it was.
And what a privilege it was to call her mine. ❤️🐾
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