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Living without Helen. . .
Well. John didn't think he could. And he didn't really want to try. But if there was one thing he knew about his wife (and there were so many, the daisy chain bracelet on his bedside table, the teasing brush she used to smooth her baby hairs, the four sugars in her coffee that he always said was too sweet), it was that she wouldn't want this for him.
It had been a long time coming. Now it was here, and John needed to move on. Or at least keep moving.
He signed for the package without really thinking about it. He'd signed so many papers (funeral rites and checks due and) that it'd been more instinct than anything, only remembering after prompting to hand the delivery driver her pen.
John stared down at the crate. The crate stared back.
There was nothing else for him to do. He took it inside.
Daisy was sweet. Gentle. She followed him around the house, trotting right on his heels. He was careful not to trip over her, but she certainly had a way of getting under foot.
He poured her cereal for breakfast. Probably not what he should be feeding her, but it wasn't like he had much else. He was going to have to research dog food, he noted absently. She sat down by his feet, happily chewing through her bowl as he ate his own, content to just wait for him to take her wherever they were going next.
He took her to the pet store, wary of leaving her home all day while he ran errands. The workers all cooed over how little she was, and he carried her in his arms until he found her a good leash.
He cleared his throat. "What kind of food should I be feeding her?"
The worker tilted her head. "I mean, I'd probably go with puppy food for small breeds — the brand is going to depend on how sensitive of a tummy she has." She scritched the top of Daisy's head gently. Daisy let out a little whine when she pulled her hand away.
John put his hand on the back of her neck, resting just enough weight to soothe her. "Easy, Daisy," he hummed. "Almost done."
He looked at the employee, who was nearly vibrating in place. "Thank you," he told her.
"No worries," she squeaked. She darted off toward the registers.
John just stared at the array of dog foods. He looked down at Daisy. "Are you as lost as I am, girl?"
Daisy just licked his hand.
Morning. Coffee. Cereal for him, kibble for Daisy. He let her outside when he got the paper, and she spent a few minutes chasing her tail around in a circle, yipping happily. John found himself smiling into his coffee. He nearly dropped the mug when he realized.
"No dogs on the bed," John grumbled to himself. "She'll be so well-behaved."
Daisy plopped down on Helen's pillow and just stared at him.
"Those words mean nothing to you." He stared at her. "Do they?"
She just tilted her head at him and yawned, tongue flopping out. She rolled over to show him her belly.
John sighed. "One day, I'm gonna teach you to listen," he lied. He found that he didn't really mind.
Big eyes pleaded up at him, and he gave in, running his hands over her soft fur.
And so the days went. Coffee. Kibble. Paper. Playtime with Daisy, when she wasn't content to just run circles around the yard. He didn't have much of a routine anymore, besides that.
Some days, John got ice cream. (Daisy too. Because she was spoiled, though he would never admit that.)
Some days, he would take her out to where he used to drive, and instead of spinning his Mustang's wheels, he would take her and run across the lot, again and again, until she was tired enough to climb back in the car unprompted.
He put a water bowl in the car, too. It was messy, but the worst thing it would get on was the floor mats. John figured he could live with that.
John saw a fancy black car parked at the gas station he usually went to. He recognized the look on the driver's face. He kept driving.
Some days, Daisy reminded him so much of Helen that it made his stomach hurt. He watched her chase a butterfly in the yard, soft ears flopping in the wind.
The ache lessened, though, when he realized that this was what Helen wanted. Why she got him a dog in the first place. He still felt lost, but he wasn't alone.
Huh, he thought. I could get used to this.
Daisy kept eating his dress socks.
It wasn't supposed to be annoying, but he couldn't figure out how to make her stop. Talking and yelling didn't work, and he definitely wasn't going to hit her.
Maybe she was just bored.
Totally. He'd take her out for some exercise.
He let her in the backyard, chasing her back and forth, hiding behind their little benches so he could spook her and chase her again when she caught up to him. She was panting by the time they were done, and John was surprised to find that he was a little winded too.
"Guess I'm getting rusty," he told Daisy. "I'm going to have to start working out again."
Daisy just lolled her tongue.
They went inside to sit down, and Daisy wandered away from him for just a minute before returning with something in her mouth.
John groaned in frustration when he realized it was one of his socks. He threw his hands in the air. "I give up."
Daisy looked up at him, chewing happily.
"Guess I need a taller laundry bin."
He tried taking Daisy to the park exactly once. She stayed right at his heel, refusing to go play with the other dogs her size unless he came with her. Even then, she just stared at him with her big, beautiful eyes until he relented and took her home.
One of the other dog-owners stopped him on the way out. "She's a little scaredy-cat, isn't she?" he asked teasingly.
John just scooped Daisy up, gently resting her against his shirt when she refused to go out the gate ahead of him. "She's shy," he said in way of explanation. He made eye contact for just a moment too long, then turned on his heel.
Daisy just kept licking the door when he put her in the car.
John shook his head. "I thought you were done for the day."
Daisy just whined back at him.
He sighed. "You're spoiled. You know that?" He stared at Daisy, and Daisy stared back, nudging his arm with her nose until he gave in and pet her. "Come on, then." He smoothed back the hair on her forehead before shifting the car into drive.
Daisy knew where they were going by now, trotting right along on his heels as he entered the pet store. He only just remembered to clip the leash to her collar, but it was really just for show. John was her favorite person. Daisy didn't run after anything else.
He walked patiently behind her as she sniffed up and down the aisles, nodding in greeting to the employees and other shoppers, but otherwise keeping to himself. Maybe he and Daisy had more in common than he'd thought.
She nosed along the toy aisle, pushing a couple with her little snout that made them squeak.
Huh. That was an idea. Of the things John had thought to pick up for Daisy when he got her, toys hadn't really been one of them. He'd tried to get her to play frisbee with him once, but she had just watched the disk fly away from her time and time again, happily following John when he went to retrieve it. He hadn't really thought about it since, and Daisy had seemed mostly content to just sit with him while he read or take naps in the weight room.
Maybe, he thought, we should give toys another try.
He stared at the assortment, kind of at a loss, but Daisy seemed to know what she wanted. She nosed a few, snuffling at them for a minute before moving on to another section of the aisle. It was quite a few, but it wasn't like John didn't have the money. He found himself with an awkward armful of products, either ones that Daisy picked or a few higher up he thought she might like.
An employee passed them, smiling politely and then doing a double-take as she saw the amount he was carrying. "Would you like a basket, sir?"
John looked down at the leash still in his hand, then at the pile of things he was struggling to hold onto. "Please." Sarah, her nametag read.
Sarah held the basket for him as he slid everything out of his arms and into the container. She hesitated. "Can I ask how old she is?"
He hesitated. "I don't know, exactly."
Sarah shrugged. "A guess is fine."
John thought about it for a moment. "Around six months," he told her. He was surprised to realize it was probably true. It still felt like just yesterday that he'd held Helen's hand in the hospital room, but it had been months since then. He'd been so distracted trying to figure out how to raise Daisy that the pang of grief in his chest nearly caught him off-guard.
"She could probably use a teething toy or two." Sarah peeked at the basket. "You've got some good play toys, there, but you might want to get her something that she can just rip up."
John thought of his mangled socks, strewn all across the living room floor. He chuckled to himself. "You're probably right."
Six months after Helen died, the alarm did nothing to get John out of bed. He just laid there, looking at the ceiling and not the empty pillow he knew he'd find beside him, wishing God had taken anyone else instead.
In his misery, he almost didn't notice the shuffling sound beside him before a wet nose poked into his ear.
"Morning to you too, Daisy," he grumbled. He wasn't ready to get up.
It didn't seem like Daisy was, either. She plopped her head down on his chest, kicking her feet up to show him her belly.
The ache in John's chest softened, just a bit. "You too, huh?" he asked her, petting her softly.
There was none of the usual morning whining or squirming that John used to gauge when she needed to go out. She just snuggled tighter into his side, closing her eyes again as she went back to sleep on top of him.
And if John just stayed in bed with her, hugging her to his side for a few more hours, then. Well. A late morning never hurt anyone.
Every day was supposed to be a routine. John found that less true by the day.
It used to be that he would wake up, go for a run before his morning coffee, spend the day keeping form or following a contract. When he met Helen, his routine shifted. He would wake up, go for a run, and bring Helen a coffee alongside his own. They would read, or go for walks, staying occupied until John did what he could to help her with dinner, even though of his many skills, cooking was never one.
When Helen was in the hospital, it became more routine to take his coffee to her, and he would read to her, catch her up on the shows she was missing, sometimes tell her about the birds she loved to feed along the boardwalk. On her worst days, he would hold her hand, just sitting with her in silence as long as visiting hours would allow.
Now, with Daisy — it was coffee, kibble, news, but the rest of the day was spent in adventure. No contract, no pressing needs, just trips to the pet store and sometimes the human one. Daisy didn't like to eat alone. Running in the lot, playing chase in the yard, or wherever John could think of to take her. His days all started the same, and they ended now whenever Daisy was too tired, whining at him to carry her up to bed. (She was perfectly capable, but she liked to make John carry her. Just to be stubborn.)
Today, it was coffee, kibble, news, and off to the fields. John was growing tired of the lot, lately, and staying in the house so much left him feeling heavy and lethargic. There was a giant empty field of grasses not too far off from where he lived — John used to take Helen there for picnics, and he hadn't been without her since he'd discovered it. Standing in the flowers, it was like he could still smell the perfume that had long faded from her side of the bed.
He didn't take a blanket this time, just Daisy and some toys, and they ran through the field until Daisy got sidetracked by all the wildflowers. John could see in vivid detail the way Helen's fingers had lingered on the daisies the last time they'd been here, her hands shaking too much to pick it by the stem. His hand wrapping around hers, placing the flower in her hair, and the mist in his eyes wasn't just part of the memory.
He was snapped out of his reverie by Daisy trotting up to him triumphantly, flower petals stuck between her teeth. John chuckled wetly, pulling the bare stem out of her mouth and tossing it towards her for her to catch again. She missed, snapping at the air in betrayal, and John swiped the tears pooling in his eyes.
Daisy trotted off to another group of flowers, chewing them off at the stem. She brought them over to him happily, little tail just wagging as he took the flowers from her. She laid down, content, and John just stared at the wildflowers in his hand.
He sat down next to her, resting his hand gently on her soft head, and stared out into the field.
It was getting dark by the time John realized they should probably be heading home. It wasn't until he was already in the car that he realized he was still holding the flowers. He knew logically that he should just toss them back into the field — what use did he have for flowers?
But he found himself tucking them up on the dashboard, anyway. He wasn't ready to let them go.
When they got home, he fed Daisy her kibble, forgoing cooking for himself for a while as he rifled through the cabinets until he finally found what he was looking for. It was kind of dusty, and much more Helen's kind of thing than John's, but it was a vase. It would do.
Daisy waited by the stairs for him to come to bed, and John felt a pang in his heart at the splash of color on the counter. For just a moment, he pretended that Helen was just around the corner, waiting for him, and then the illusion was gone. His vision blurred, but it was almost cathartic.
Daisy yipped.
"Alright," he grumbled. "I'm coming."
Daisy, John learned, loved the rain. Unfortunately, the man himself did not. But he still couldn't bring himself to put a stop to her fun as she splashed around in the mud, even when she left a streak of it across his leg as she darted past him.
He just shook his head fondly. She was so getting a bath.
"Daisy!" he called. "Time to go in!"
John readied himself with the towel, almost (but not quite) managing to catch her as she darted into the house. Mud streaked the floor behind her trail, and John hung his head.
Bested by a dog. He really was getting rusty.
When he found the culprit, she shook her little body happily, trying to get off all the extra water stuck to her coat. John stripped off his shirt and hefted her into the tub. He was gentle as he sudsed her down, shaking his head when the water washed off brown. She was so small to manage to get so dirty.
As soon as he turned off the water, it was a scuffle to get her into a towel instead of shaking her wet fur all over the house. (John had made that mistake before. Once.) He rubbed her as dry as the towel would get her before begrudgingly allowing her out into the rest of the house. Daisy ran right to her little bed at the foot of the couch, curling up peacefully.
John just shook his head at her, grabbing a bucket and his cleaning spray. "You're lucky you're so cute," he told her seriously.
Daisy just snored in response.
It was eight months after Helen's death, and John hadn't visited her grave. It hit him one day, looking at the date on the newspaper, and the world came crashing down around him. Everything was too loud, too bright, too fast, and it was all he could do to follow Daisy inside when she went. Instead of indulging their morning couch routine, he let himself back up the stairs, turning on the shower as hot at it would go until the scalding temperature finally brought him back to himself.
Daisy yipped at him from behind the curtain, and John realized he'd definitely been in there longer than he thought. Water sloughed off of him as he stepped onto the bath mat, and it was only then that he realized his clothes were still on. He tried to towel off for a second before he realized it was a pointless endeavor, choosing instead to leave his clothes in a pile on the floor of the shower to dry off instead.
Getting dressed a second time was too much, so John just didn't. He let himself lay back down in bed, pulling Daisy up next to him from her place on the floor, and just let her gentle breathing and the sound of her heart beating ground him. It was well into the afternoon by the time he managed to get up again, but he knew there would be at least one place still waiting for him. For the first time since he'd gotten her, he left the house without Daisy to go do something stupid.
He took the Mustang, and the man at the lot looked nervous at his arrival this time. "No dog?" he asked quietly.
John took a deep breath. "At home."
The man just looked relieved. John headed in. He spent the afternoon spinning out on the asphalt, screaming as loud as he possibly could until it felt like he had run out of air. The rumble of the engine just didn't comfort John the way it used to. He found himself missing Daisy's soft fur, her little happy yips when he let her stick her head out the window. John ignored the stinging in his eyes and turned the car around. Daisy was waiting for him.
He added a little bit of steak juice to her kibble that night as an apology. Considering the way she crawled on top of him that night instead of laying next to him, he figured she would forgive him just fine.
He hasn't had her for a year yet, but Daisy's birthday is coming up soon. John just isn't sure what to do about it. He looked online and apparently he shouldn't bake his dog a cake, but he couldn't stand the thought of not doing anything for the occasion.
It's not like she would understand the occasion, but with everything she'd done for John already, he figured the very least he could do was give her a good day to remember.
He picked up extra treats from the pet store, and he got her a little bag of balloons, even if he felt ridiculous sitting at the counter and blowing them up. (He'd read somewhere that some dogs liked to chase them. Might as well see if Daisy was one of them, right?)
Instead of a cake, he made her a piece of chicken for her lunch. They went to the field, and there was no tightness in his chest because this time, it felt right. He tossed her pieces of chicken in between chasing her through the tall grass, and when she plopped a bunch of flowers in his hand, he just ruffled her fur and told her, "I love you too."
They played there until the sun went down, and Daisy was so tired he had to carry her back to the car, her little legs just dangling behind her. He tucked her into bed next to him, not even bothering to pretend that he was going to make her sleep in her bed down at the foot of his own, and when he came back from his shower, she turned to fit her side against his.
A car couldn't give me this, John thought. He would never have known how much he needed Daisy if Helen hadn't known him better first. He let Daisy's breathing lull him to sleep.
On the anniversary of Helen's death, John woke up before the alarm. He let himself lay there until it went off, though, the warm weight of Daisy at his side enough to stifle the pain in his chest for the time being.
He followed through his routine on muscle memory alone. Coffee. Kibble. News. Daisy stared at him hopefully from the yard, and he made his tired legs stand to go play with her. It wasn't like she knew what was wrong with him. Everything was almost normal when they got in the car, only John half-expected to see Helen sitting there. When he looked, of course, it was just Daisy.
Despite himself, he felt his mouth form a small smile. Helen would love this, he thought. She'd always wanted to see him more . . . relaxed. It was like Daisy had made him better, somehow.
He put Daisy on her leash to walk into the cemetary. She always stayed right on his heels, but he didn't think he would be much good if today was the day she decided to take off.
They walked in their usual silence, and it took longer than John would have liked to admit to make himself approach Helen's grave. He sat down in front of the headstone, right over where Helen's casket should have been buried. It felt a little like holding her hand.
Daisy sat next to him, leaning her warmth into his side.
"Hi, baby," John managed to get out before he choked. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I know it's been a while. An entire year." He shook his head. "I can't believe you've been gone that long."
Truth be told, John had always thought he would follow her right to the grave. But like everything else, Helen had known him too well.
"Figured it's probably time for you two to meet," he choked out, his voice just above a whisper. "Hel, this is Daisy. God, she's just like you. So much it hurts, sometimes." He felt the tears pooling in his eyes, but this time, he didn't stop them from falling.
"She's a good girl," he told the headstone. "You chose well for me." Because only his wife could have known something about him that John didn't know about himself.
"If it hadn't been for her, well. . ." Images flashed through John's mind. The Mustang, speeding off the edge of the road. Rolling over and over until John's world stayed spinning forever. Blood, a cracked windshield, and black creeping around the edges of his vision. "I think you knew what I would do." He laughed wetly. "You always knew too much. God, I miss that."
He sat and just talked to the headstone like Helen could hear him for hours. Daisy stayed right by his side, leaning her little head against his arm when he started to choke up. By the time the sun went down, she had crawled into his lap entirely, the occasional little snuffle reminding John to start petting her again.
John smiled down at Daisy. "You would have loved her," he told Helen. I know I do.
When it was time to go, he scooped Daisy up in his arms, leaving his white bouquet leaning against the headstone. "To remember us by," he told her.
It was harder to leave than John had expected, but easier too, with the way Daisy snored happily in his arms. She blinked at him blearily, yawning right in his face.
He chuckled, rubbing her ears. "Big day, huh, girl?"
Daisy licked him right on the face, and John just sighed. There was no getting her out of that habit.
"C'mon, girl," he told her. "Let's go home."
As he started the engine, the Mustang rumbling to life beneath him, John remembered something Helen had left him in the letter that came with Daisy. He laughed to himself.
Helen had been right.
The car didn't count.