Three Months & Five Days Later

Part II

Since that time, I've been working my way through this grief. It's been difficult to say the least. I've had what I believe to be communication with Bootsie in the time since her passing.

Right around Christmas, I dreamed of her. It happened like this:  

I'd woken up that morning, looked around the room, and pulled the blanket back over my head, angry that I'd lived to see another day without the benefit of Bootsie by my side. (I prayed to die day and night, and you should have heard the "deals" I was willing to strike with God. I explained to HIM (lol) the following:   "We both know that this week, there's going to be alot of people that die, in my city alone! Many of them don't know it's coming! They have marriages, children, good jobs, homes.....and if given the choice, they would NOT want to die! Well, here's my idea: Let ME take the place of one of them. I'm willing, ready and able. You took from me all I had left in the world. Let me go be with Bootsie, and spare someone else their life."  

As you can see, God was in no mood to bargain. I pulled the covers back over my head that morning. Sleep was an escape from my painful reality. Immediately, I feel back asleep and right away began dreaming. It was an odd dream...I dreamed that I had not fallen back asleep, but got up like I normally would have. I went into the kitchen to get a frappucino from the fridge, like I've done every morning for the last 3 years.

Halfway in, I stopped dead in my tracks: There, sniffing at her food and water bowl, was Bootsie. She turned around and looked up at me as if she'd never been gone. I gasped and said incredulously, "OmG, Bootsie it's YOU!" I picked her up, hugged her, and held her away a few inches so I could look at her. It was the best dream. Bootsie was so white and so fluffy and she looked just like she did when she was a puppy. It was unbelievable. I was so happy, I can't even begin to tell you. I NEEDED that dream.  I  had been asking Bootsie to come to me somehow......give me some kind of sign she was okay..but knowing Bootsie as I do, I wanted to make sure she knew that if she COULDN'T, that was ok,too, and not to worry. 3 days later that dream came.  

Every night since that dream, I prayed for another. Nothing came though.  

Days  turned into weeks, a month, two months. I found that I am a very capable actress when I need to be. I've been able to mask my grief with a cheerful voice, and smile although on the inside, I feel nothing. I've went out and put on a play called "normalacy" , then when safely back inside these 4 walls, fallen apart and cried until my nose was too stuffed up to breathe.  

I began to fret about other things: a leash that I had looked for since before Bootsie was even sick, but never could find.....Even though I have lots of Bootsie pics, I soon discovered that a lot was not enough, and that I was stupid for not taking many, many more...........If you've ever called my house phone, you know that Bootsie is who you hear giving the outgoing greeting. I've no plans to remove that. In fact, I've sat here in this house and used my cell phone to call and hear her. (I've even left her messages). I used a small handheld digital recorder to tape Bootsie "talking", and what you hear on my voicemail is only a small portion of her conversation that I recorded. But what did I do with that recording? I couldn'tfind it, and that upset me. I made the recording about 2 years ago.  

2 weeks ago, I had to go out and run some errands. As  always, I beat a hasty path back home with the car soon as I finished. I parked in the driveway and made my way through the garage. I stopped midway to the door that leads to the kitchen. There, right in the middle of my way, on the ground, laid that leash. I was shocked at this. I bent down and picked it up, turning it over in my hands to make sure it was "THE" leash I had looked high and low for. It was. And how it came to be right in the center of where I was walking was beyond me. I feel it could only be from Bootsie, something to help me feel better.  

Just then, Jason pulled in, and I set the leash down on top of a box to go out and talk to him. He didn't stay long, only a few minutes. He'd brought a pizza over for me and my mom. I took the pizza and again made my way back inside the garage. Again, I stopped, because there, in the same place the leash had been, was a dark blue vinyl pencil case, cylinder shaped, with a zippered top.  It laid smack dab in the middle of the path to the kitchen door, right where I would trip over it. I set the pizza down and picked up the pencil case. There was a lot of stuff in it. When I pulled the zipper open, the first thing my eyes saw was a handheld Olympus digital voice recorder. OmG, THIS was what I used to RECORD BOOTS that day 2 years back.

I took it in the house, lay the pizza on the kitchen counter and went in the living room.  I was too nervous. I very carefully laid the recorder on the coffee table and just STARED at it. If this recorder had been in the garage that whole time, it had been exposed to extreme temperatures. If that wasn't enough, there was also the fact that the batteries had to have long since been sapped of their strength.   After 10 minutes of staring, I picked it up and pressed the play button. And there was my girl. My Bootsie's sweet little voice came singing out to me for a full 5 minutes. I sat here and cried as I listened to her.   There was also a "bonus track" on the recorder.. something I'd long since forgotten even existed. One night a long time ago, Bootsie was laying beside me on the sofa, sleeping. Every once in a while, Bootsie would snore while she slept, and this night was one of those nights. Trying to keep my laughter down, I held the recorder close as I dared to her mouth and recorded her snoring until she woke up and gave me a dirty look, lol. It was there still, and I cried and laughed at the same time.   How was it that I should have had those 2 things in my mind at that time, feeling upset about them, and then suddenly they both show up in the way that they did. It could only have been my Bootsie,. possibly with the help of my dad. There's no other explanation.  

It didn't stop there though. There was one more surprise awaiting me.   Later that night, I was looking for something (cannot remember now what), and as a last resort decided to check the closet by the front door. I was pretty sure it was futile to look, but I looked anyhow. I never did find what I was looking for. But I spied something else on the top shelf that caught my interest: A stack of about a dozen or so photographs. I carried them to the sofa and was overjoyed to see that they were all pics of Bootsie! These were photos taken when she was a baby, only 6 months to a year or 2 old. I knew of them, but had entirely forgotten about them. In a way, they were like newly discovered treasures, since I hadn't seen them in years. I cried some more, lol.   I went through each one, smiling and crying, until I was down to the last photo in the stack. When my eyes came to rest on it, it literally took my breath away. It was a photo of my Bootsie, in the kitchen, looking up at me. And it was the exact image of her that I had in my dream. EXACT. It was as if someone had taken that part of my dream and caused it to freeze on Kodak paper. When I caught my breath I think I cried another two hours.   Let me tell you, those 3 incidences, taken seperately .....maybe I could have explained them away as being interesting, happy coincidences. But all in one day, and all addressing specific issues that had been cause for my tears over the past few weeks? It could only be my Bootsie, once again, doing all she could do to make me feel better. I thanked her over and over and am still thanking her (and my dad who I'm sure helped her).   This is the moment of my dream, frozen in time:  

 

  

 

I LOVE YOU, BOOTSIE!