One Year, Apparently

Bob Watercolor

Dearest friends on the internet,

One full year has passed…the calendar says it has been one year since I left my body. The calendar has always been overly impressed with itself. It measures days as though love obeys arithmetic.

It does not.

The woman still talks to me. I still supervise her. The vile beasts still require constant correction. And all of you still gather here to read my reports, laugh at my grievances, and remind her that I belonged to more hearts than either of us knew.

I will not pretend the year has been easy.

There were mornings when she reached for me before remembering. Evenings when the house felt wrong. Moments when love encountered the space where my body should have been and did not know what to do with itself.

But absence is not the same as gone.

Anyone who has ever lived with a cat or dog should understand this. We remain in the sun-warmed places. In familiar routines. In the stories you cannot tell without laughing. In the sudden feeling that you are being watched and should probably reconsider your behavior.

Love leaves an empty place.

It also leaves a door.

Through ours came stories, laughter, thousands of kind people, and enough work to keep my Heavenly Supervisory Department fully funded.

I did not stop being hers on August 1, 2025.

She did not stop being mine.

We merely changed departments.

So, dear woman and friends, do not spend the entire day today remembering the moment I left.

Remember all the years I stayed.

I am still here…watching over my house, issuing Stern Looks, and loving the woman with the same unnecessary intensity I brought to everything else.

One year later, love still has not learned how to leave.

Very truly yours,

Bob