No one claimed him.
My sister, Marlene, thought I was becoming obsessed.
“Diane, you have to stop feeding that stray,” she had told me one evening.
“He isn’t a stray. He belongs to someone. He just keeps choosing Ethan.”
“Sweetheart, you’re grieving. You’re turning a dog into a sign because you don’t want to let go.”
Marlene had helped me after Ethan died. She handled the hospital papers, the funeral arrangements, and the endless forms I could not bring myself to read.
She reminded me of that often.
“You have to move forward,” she always said. “Ethan wouldn’t want you trapped in sadness.”
But when I looked at the dog lying faithfully beside my son’s grave, I wondered if moving forward meant forgetting the person who had made my life worth living.
“You keep coming back,” I whispered to him. “Why, boy? Why Ethan?”
