Yesterday, the photos arrived.
All 86 of them.
And today, I finally sat down with a glass of wine, lit a candle, spread them all over the coffee table, and started putting nearly sixteen years of Blitz into some kind of order.
Chronological order, specifically.
Well. To the best of my ability. When you’re sorting through that many years of one very loved dog’s life, eventually time becomes less of a straight line and more like, Okay, the kids look about this age here, we lived in that house then, and Blitz had that collar, so this probably goes somewhere around here.
Close enough.
And really, perfect chronology isn’t the point.
Her life is.
I chose this album online, which is always a little bit of a gamble when you’re buying something meant to hold something this important. You can’t touch it first. You can’t smell the leather or feel its weight in your hands. You just look at pictures on a screen and hope that when it arrives, it feels worthy of what you’re putting inside it.
This one does.
It’s beautiful. Rich brown leather, straps that wrap around it to bind it closed, and a heart carved into the front. It feels substantial and old-fashioned in the best possible way—like something meant to survive years of being opened, handled, passed around and revisited.
It feels like hers.
And now it holds the best of Blitz.
There are pictures of her when she was young and that beautiful white-and-dark-chocolate face hadn’t yet begun to soften with age. Pictures of my children when they were young, because that’s the thing about having a dog for nearly sixteen years: eventually you’re not just looking at pictures of the dog growing older.
You’re watching an entire family grow up around her.
There are babies who became kids and kids who became adults.
Different homes. Different hairstyles. Different chapters of our lives.
Parks and lakes and backyards. Walks and cuddles. Completely ordinary afternoons that nobody knew would someday become precious evidence of a life we desperately wished we could revisit.
And through all of it…
Blitz.
That same face.
That same enormous smile.
That same dog woven into the background—and very often planted firmly in the foreground—of our family’s life.
I smiled far more than I cried while I put these pictures into their pages today.
That feels important.
There are still moments when looking at her hurts so badly that I would give damn near anything to reach through a photograph and touch her again. But today, mostly, I looked at these pictures and thought:
God, we had fun.
We really did.
The album also has writing pages, and I haven’t touched those yet.
One thing at a time.
Today was for photographs.
The blank pages are waiting at the back, and I actually love that they’re still blank. Because they’re not just mine to fill.
Anyone can pick up this album whenever they want, flip through it, find a photograph that knocks loose a memory and go write it down. Maybe they’ll write about the exact moment in the picture. Maybe the photograph will remind them of something completely different. Maybe somebody will remember some tiny, stupid, hilarious Blitz thing I’ve forgotten.
Whatever feels right.
There are no rules.
Those pages can become ours over time—a collection of the things photographs couldn’t capture.
The sounds.
The stories.
The quirks.
The things she did that made us laugh.
The things she did that drove us insane.
The little details you think you’ll remember forever until suddenly you’re terrified you won’t.
I originally planned to put the finished album behind her shadow box with the rest of her memorial things.
But when I closed those leather straps around it today, I changed my mind.
For now, Blitz belongs on the coffee table.
Right where she is.
Not tucked away.
Not something we have to deliberately go looking for when we’re feeling sentimental or sad.
Just… there.
Ready.
Anybody can sit down, pick her up, loosen those straps and spend a little time with her.
And somehow I really love that.
Because Blitz wasn’t an ornament in our lives. She wasn’t kept somewhere special and brought out for special occasions.
She was everywhere.
Underfoot. On the couch. In the yard. At the park. With my children. With me. Watching. Protecting. Playing. Aging. Loving us through chapter after chapter after chapter.
So maybe the coffee table is exactly where her story belongs.
Right in the middle of the house.
Where the best of Blitz is always within reach.
And where, little by little, we’re learning that remembering her doesn’t always have to hurt.
Sometimes it can make us smile.
Today, it mostly did.
And I’ll take that. ❤️
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