Days after Max died, I kept telling myself I needed to buy yellow roses. There should be daisies too, because they were my favorite flower. In a way, it felt like Max was guiding me toward the flowers—not as a gesture of sympathy, but as a thank you for giving him ten golden years of life. I ordered the sunniest bouquet I could find in the dead of winter. It sat beside his ashes on our dining room table until the last petal fell.

Max passed away peacefully in our home, which everyone tells me is ideal. I am grateful I didn’t have to decide his fate for him. Although his departure from the world was tender and quiet, the days leading up to it were traumatic and heartbreaking.

Two days before Max passed, he was peeing blood. I’ll never forget the sight of that harsh red liquid pouring from his frail body and seeping into the white snow. Even if I wanted to pretend it wasn’t real, the snow glistened with proof. The image of those crimson stains scattered across my backyard is where my grief lives.

I figured when the snow melted, it would wash away the trauma with it. Instead, the haunting scene remained frozen in my memory. Even after the snow was gone, the blood remained. It had dried in the shape of a heart, which felt like it should have comforted me, but instead stared back at me as a cruel reminder of the love I lost.

As spring days prevailed, the blood heart slowly surrendered to the thaw. I looked outside, hopeful there would be green grass again. To my dismay, the blood splatters remained. Patches of lime-green grass emerged within the boundaries of Max’s hundred-foot lead, but all I could see was red.

The seasons were changing, but the backyard was not. It felt like I was never going to escape the horror of losing Max.

Then came warmer days. Days when I dug my hands into the dirt and felt the sun on my face. I poured my heart into my planters and fed my sorrows to the soil.

I had been so busy watering my flowers that I hadn’t noticed the wild daisies sprouting along the perimeter of the driveway. Every year, I scattered hundreds of wildflower seeds across our property, and none of them ever took—until now.

Here was my favorite flower, blooming in plain sight as though it had been there for me all along; I just had to get out of the backyard.