Feeling sad this evening

I found this photo of Azalea and the girls having a tea party in 2006. They all look so young.

It broke my heart.

I miss Azalea on and off throughout the days, but the nighttime is when I really notice it. It has been a month now and that terrible physical realization that she is not coming back and (what a horror of death!) her physical presence is fading from my consciousness. When she was here I never thought that could happen. How could it ever be difficult to conjure her smell, her even breathing, the wet firmness of her black gumdrop nose, but she has grown distant, already a memory.
I fought the permanence of her death for a while, so it is creepy when the dreadful reality seeps in.
She really is gone.
Even if she is a dog angel, here with me now, wings folded sweetly against her invisible brown body.
Even if she is the one who will be waiting for me on the other side whenever I make that journey myself.

She is still gone from this life, the one we are in now.

Her ashes came the other day.
The vet dropped them off in a pretty maroon bag when no one was home. I thought the babysitter had left me a gift and I opened it eagerly when I got home from work at 1am.

"What is this? What could be so heavy?"
Then I saw the word cemetery on the bag and I got it. I got, suddenly, that I was holding the remains of my dear furry dog in a hard wooden box.

I put them up on my altar and have ignored them for a while.
Not sure how to explain it to the girls, it is a difficult story to sit with, to imagine and then explain....something you love dearly was put into a fire, burned up into ash, cooled and then eventually knocked and swept into a tiny wooden box and locked tight.
None of it makes any sense. Really. Does it?