The Gate Left Wide Open

My golden retriever is gone, and I know she isn't dead. I know because I can still feel the shape of her absence, the way a missing tooth aches even when nothing touches it. There were signs. She'd been losing her sense of direction, wandering farther each day, standing in the wrong corners of the garden as if trying to remember why she'd gone there. That morning I noticed the gate had blown open in the wind. I saw it. I understood what it meant. And I kept walking. Later, when she was gone, I said nothing about the gate. We searched for hours. Posters, phone calls, trembling voices. I cried too, because it made sense to cry. But the truth is simple: I let the old girl wander away because I couldn't face watching her fade piece by piece.