It was a quite beautiful weekend in Michigan this past weekend. The weather was practically perfect and both Saturday and Sunday it really felt like Spring was finally here. 
They recently joined a flag football league that their mom decided to start when she realized that their school district didn't have its own program. Given the size of their district, it just made sense to keep the kids local. They ended up having 25 separate teams or something like that. It was pretty impressive and ran rather smoothly for their first Saturday of games.
That's not really the point of this post...
We were driving home when
Of course then she asked what was going on...
I took my sunglass of to let her see that I had been crying.
She was actually a little taken back because up until that point we had both been doing pretty well with the loss of our dog. I can't tell you the last time before that I had broken down. I felt like I had actually finished the week pretty good.
I'm not saying I'm totally over it, because I know I will never be, but the whole time healing wounds thing had definitely started to take place.
My problem is (especially when I am driving), I get in my own head too much. My mind finds all these tangents to run away on and some of them are good, some bad, and some just downright WTF! In this particular case, I was thinking about the fact that I never get to take a photo of Jovi again.
I'm actually getting a little misty right now just typing this.
No more cute photos of her on the couch.
No more pictures of her laying on the floor on her side content with everything in the world.
No more photos of her looking out the window faithfully fulfilling her neighborhood watch duties.
No more pictures where we try to figure out just how she got her body in that position and how uncomfortable it must be.
No more photos of her rolling around in the first decent snow of the year.
All we have are memories and the many (or few) photos we have taken up to that point.
We have been slowly picking up her things here and there as we clean the house. There are some things that we just haven't been able to touch. Like her bed, her toys, and her dishes. You can see in the photo above that there is still water in the dish. That's the water we put in there the day we said goodbye to her. We have just been slowly letting it evaporate.
Something told me the other day to take a picture of it. Sure, I knew I could use it in a post, but over time, that water will be gone. Then the bowls will be gone, and finally all we will have left are the memories and photos from our time with Jovi.
So I'm tell you. Take that photo. I don't care how dumb it seems at the time. I don't care how much your friends or family makes fun of you. I don't care how ridiculous you feel.
With the ever increasing ability and storage in smartphones these days, there's absolutely no reason not to.
Eventually, those photos are all we are going to have.
This ended up being a lot harder post to write than I thought. I've cried more this morning than I probably have in a week. If you follow my blog regularly, don't be surprised if you continue to see photos of Jovi here and there in future posts.
These pictures are treasures and artifacts of a life that brought so much joy. It would be a crime not to share them with the world.
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or
