About seven months before you left this earth, you started smiling in ways I’d never witnessed before. You even smiled in your dreams — not just when it came time for meals, a piece of cheese, or a morning walk. You smiled when you’d see me. Whenever I’d come home, you’d raise your weary body from the couch and inch towards the front door just in time to tell me: welcome home, mama — where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you. I’m so happy to see you.
I’d smile at you and pet your head. Sometimes I would even cup your face in my hands and kiss your forehead one, two, three, four, five times and whisper — “mama loves you.”
I still remember the way you smelled. You smelled like that even after you died. Like slow-cooked turkey. The same kind your other mama would make for your meals — week after week after week. She likes to remind me of the ways we took such good care in nourishing you.
The month before you left us, a family of finches used the fur — the fur your mama had plucked from you and left on the front yard — to make a nest on the inside corner of our front porch. Where the front window is — where your bed on the couch laid — where you would keep watch day and night.
For weeks on end you watched the mama finch lay on her nest and warm her eggs in the morning and evening light. The days spent gazing at one another allowed you two to grow comfortable … so it was no surprise when the baby birds hatched and she began feeding around the same time you would rise. You watched them grow day by day — their peeps growing louder by the day — until about one week before you left us, they took flight and said goodbye, as if they were paving the way for your journey into the sky.
In the weeks before you died, your mama and I began to barter with death — asking her over and over again if she could wait another day.
But she kept insisting in all sorts of ways that the time had come and you just had to go.
On the day you left us — after you took the medicine like a very good boy and began to drift off to sleep — as you started to dream, your sister jumped on the couch next to you. She wasn’t trying to hold on, to beg you to stay, like we had been — she just didn’t want you to be alone. And there she stayed until your breathing slowed and your heart stopped. Your mamas held your hands and kissed your face, and their teardrops soaked your fur — all while you just laid perfectly still. Sleeping soundly.
I remember how your body stayed warm for a few hours. And how your mama wiped your fur clean and I did my best to hold on to the warmth slowly leaving your body. Then we both took turns holding you in our arms as you journeyed peacefully into the next life. Your body still here, but your spirit slowly drifting outside.
Then it came time for your brother to say his goodbye … and he slowly walked towards your body that laid quietly on its side on your side of the couch and he sat in between your belly and your paws — knowing you wouldn’t mind. I’d never seen him so still — and there he sat watching you go.
Then your mama picked you up and put you on the floor and cleaned you up once more.
She wrapped you up in your favorite blanket, picked you up off the floor, and we made our way to the place where your body would be laid to rest.
We got in the car and you slept on your mama’s lap. Quietly. Not like the other times before — where you would dig your paws into your mama’s bare thighs trying to peek your head out the car window.
A block from home, the skies turned suddenly dark and it began to pour. Like big teardrops falling from the sky. Your mama and I looked at each other and began to sob, knowing it was you.
We kept driving until we got to the highway and the wind was so strong we got scared and pulled off. The whole time you just laid there quietly as your mama stroked your fur — telling you how much she loved you. We drove for a while until we got to the place where warm water would cover your body and take all the pain away.
I’ll admit I was scared. I didn’t want to leave you. But your other mama said it was time. And that this was just your body. And that you were finally free up in the sky. So I held you in my arms one last time — kissed your forehead — and told you how much I love you.
Then your mama picked you up and unwrapped you from your blue blanket and told you she needed to make sure you would stay nice and warm inside, as she rewrapped the blanket around you —tightly – making sure your paws would stay nice and close to your chest. She reminded me with a knowing smile — it’s just his body — he would hate to be so tightly confined. I told her she was right. And she held my hand as we petted your face one last time and we both said our final goodbye.
And as we got in the car, the sun started to shine — warming our faces in its soft light — as if you were trying to say — mamas, I’m up here, just in the sky.
On May 18, 2026 – five years and ten days after we welcomed Leaf into our home for the first time — he passed to the next life — joining his sister Autumnboy, his brother Moose and his cousins Pia and Vortex. Surrounded by his siblings, Seita and Koa, and his mamas… he drifted off to sleep on one of the comfiest spots on the couch.