Nikita's Rainbow Bridge Pet Loss Memorial

Welcome to Nikita's Rainbow Bridge Memorial Residency

Memories of Nikita

My sweet Nikita,
I remember the first day we met. My mom picked Rachel and me up from school with a dog crate in the trunk. Dad met us at the foster house, and I excitedly ran up the stairs and rang the doorbell. Three giant huskies came running to greet us, and behind them was you. A little four-month-old pup with big brown eyes and a ferociously wagging tail made a beeline straight toward me. You jumped up on me and started licking my face, nearly toppling me to the ground. Despite your foster owners' reprimands and my parents' shocked expressions, I erupted into laughter as you kissed my nose. I knew it then- you were my girl.
Although my dad had no intention of taking home a dog that day, my mom came prepared with your crate. My dad insisted that we needed to think it over, make sure you were the right fit. But I didn't have anything to think about, and how could he say no to his 8-year-old daughter? So we loaded you up and made our way home, with me in the backseat sticking my fingers through the bars to give you pets. When we got home, I immediately grabbed a pen, paper, and my mom's laptop to start thinking of names. I remember searching "names for huskies" and writing almost everything down. Dakota? No, that was my aunt's cat who passed. Sugar? My dad hated that. Kyra and Luna and Akira and... Nikita. You looked like you could be a Nikita. And as you came thundering down the back stairs towards the door, only to pee all over the kitchen floor, I yelled, "Nikita peed!" And your guilty little eyes met mine, and that was it. You were Nikita. My Nikita.
The memory of taking you home and calling you mine is spotty, but the feelings from that day undoubtedly arise as I type this story. The bubbling excitement of going to meet you, the giddiness of being chosen the minute I walked through the door, the overwhelming sense that I had just met the best thing that would ever happen to me. And as I sit here, flooded with our first memories and our last, I don't know how to choose the right words to say. I could write about the time I tied you to my tube sled, unbeknownst to my parents, and we wound up tangled in the bushes. I could write about when you escaped the backyard, and an older man in a classic black BMW pulled into our driveway with your head sticking out of the window and your white fur coating his newly detailed seats. I could write about the countless days and nights you spent by my side while I was too weak to get out of bed, refusing to leave even to eat or go outside. And still, nothing seems like enough to encapsulate the memory that is you.
Fifteen years is a long time, the better part of my life. How do I pick and choose the best memories? How do I go on, knowing we'll never create anymore? So, as I write to you now, shaky fingers carefully choosing the words my mouth cannot form, I know that there is no need. Every moment we shared is tightly wrapped in a heart-shaped box in the back of my mind, free to visit whenever I need you. I close my eyes and I can still see your precious face, still hear the clicking of your feet on the hardwood floor, still feel the wetness of your nose on my face as you decide the perfect place for a kiss. Though I notice your absence in your empty bed and your collar hanging on the wall, I never feel that you are gone. I see you in the grass where you loved to run. On the roads where we took our drives. In the falling snow that you refused to come inside from. In my reflection, in my eyes, I see the other half of my soul that has shifted from your body to mine.
I miss you, Nikita. But I know you're never really gone.