Measured in Heartbeats

People think our lives are measured in years.

But the older I become, the less I believe that.

I think they're measured in heartbeats.

Not only our own.

The little heartbeats that walk beside us for a while, quietly sharing a chapter of our lives before time asks us to carry on without them.

When I look back, I don't remember my life by birthdays, houses or jobs.

I remember the souls who were there.

Somehow, through almost every version of me, there has been another heartbeat waiting at home.

My childhood belonged to a cat.

Ask me what shoes I wore when I was eight and I couldn't tell you. Ask me what I got for Christmas that year and I'd probably struggle to remember.

But I can tell you where he slept.

I remember the comforting weight of his warm little body curled at the end of my bed. I remember his purr that could make everything feel quieter. I remember a companionship that asked for almost nothing from me except food, warmth and love.

He knew the little girl I was.

Animals do that.

They quietly witness versions of us that nobody else will ever completely know.

They see the ordinary days that never make it into photographs. The tears behind bedroom doors. The arguments. The excitement. The birthdays. The lazy Sundays. The moments so insignificant that nobody thinks to remember them.

But they were there.

Silent historians of lives they never knew they were recording.

When I left home at sixteen, I thought I was leaving a house.

Years later, I realised I'd also left behind the keeper of my childhood.

Then came my twenties.

God, my twenties were busy.

I was raising a little boy while still trying to work out how to be an adult myself. Life seemed permanently in motion. There were parks to visit, packed lunches to make, endless washing, family days out, work, bills, rushing around and trying to make a life while I was still becoming the person who was supposed to be in charge of it.

And beside us was a little girl with four paws who somehow had exactly the same energy as those years.

Looking back now, I can't separate her from my twenties.

She belonged to them.

She belonged to that young mum, that little boy, that chaos, those days out, that house and that version of life.

Some animals don't simply enter our lives.

They arrive wearing the same season we're living through.

And then my thirties came.

Somewhere along the way, without really noticing, I had changed.

I didn't want to chase everything anymore.

Home became my favourite place.

Life became quieter.

And then another little heartbeat arrived.

My little boy with four paws.

He seemed to understand the woman I'd become before I did.

He wasn't particularly interested in adventures.

He was interested in me.

If I moved rooms, he moved rooms. If I made a cup of tea, he appeared at my feet. If I sat on the sofa, he found his place beside me.

And if I cried, somehow he always knew.

There are people who say, “He was only a dog.”

Those people have never been loved by one.

He wasn't simply part of my life.

He became part of my breathing.

The first face I saw in the morning. The last little heartbeat near me before I fell asleep at night.

He didn't know whether I'd had a successful day.

He didn't know what I earned.

He didn't care what I looked like, whether I'd put weight on, whether there was a mark on my face, whether somebody else thought I was beautiful or whether I'd spent the entire day feeling like I wasn't enough.

He didn't know whether we were rich or poor.

If I had been poor, he would have been poor beside me.

If I'd lived in one tiny room, he would have curled up in that room and believed he'd been given the world.

And if I'd become rich, he would have been rich too and cared no more about it than he cared about yesterday's weather.

Because animals don't love our circumstances.

They love us.

They ask for the barest things.

Feed me.

Be kind to me.

Let me stay beside you.

And in return, they give us a kind of love that asks no questions before offering itself.

Sometimes I wonder whether that's why the bond feels almost impossible to explain.

Perhaps when an animal becomes yours, something happens that we can't see.

Two souls quietly tie themselves together.

No ceremony.

No promises.

No understanding of how much time they're going to get.

Just...

Wherever you're going, I'll come too.

And they do.

They come for the whole ride.

The bad houses and the beautiful ones.

The empty bank accounts and the better years.

The relationships.

The babies.

The heartbreak.

The new jobs.

The lost jobs.

The house moves.

The birthdays.

The mornings when you're happy to be alive and the nights when you're crying so quietly that nobody else knows.

They don't wait for the better version of you.

They love the one standing in front of them.

And perhaps that's why losing them hurts in a place ordinary grief doesn't quite reach.

When my little shadow died, I thought I was grieving a dog.

I was.

But I was grieving something bigger too.

For the first time in decades, there wasn't another little heartbeat following me around the house.

Nobody waiting at the front door.

Nobody needing dinner at six.

Nobody appearing when I opened the fridge.

Nobody climbing beside me on the sofa.

Nobody whose entire little world seemed to revolve around the simple fact that I was in it.

And almost at the same time, my son was becoming a young man.

Exactly as I had spent years hoping he would.

His world was getting bigger. Friends mattered differently. His future was beginning to stretch out in front of him.

I watched it happen with enormous pride.

But nobody tells mothers that one day motherhood changes shape.

There isn't a meeting.

Nobody thanks you for your years of service and hands you a new job description.

One day you're tying shoelaces.

Then somehow you're helping them think about careers.

One day you're reading bedtime stories.

Years later, they're telling you stories about heartbreak, work and what they want from their future.

Motherhood doesn't end.

Its shape changes.

And perhaps that's why the silence after my dog died felt so enormous.

Not because I was alone.

Because I had spent most of my adult life being needed.

First by a little boy.

Then by a little dog.

And suddenly, both chapters had quietly turned their pages.

It was in that silence that I began thinking about another little heartbeat.

One I'd lost years before.

A baby I never got to know.

Grief never completely leaves us. It becomes woven into us instead. You stop tripping over it every day, but every now and then your fingers find the thread.

And one evening, I found myself wondering whether souls care nearly as much about appearances as we do.

I don't know whether I believe it.

Perhaps some thoughts aren't meant to be proved.

Perhaps they're only meant to be held gently.

But I wondered...

What if a tiny soul that couldn't arrive wrapped in a blanket simply searched for another way home?

What if it found the quickest route back?

Four paws instead of tiny hands.

Fur instead of a blanket.

Bright eyes instead of a baby's first smile.

Maybe that's all it was.

A story my heart wrote because it missed them both.

Or maybe love understands things that logic never will.

Nobody can tell me.

And strangely, I don't need them to.

Because the thought taught me something else.

Maybe we spend too much time worrying about what love looks like instead of recognising how it feels.

Maybe motherhood never belonged exclusively to children.

Maybe children are simply where some of us first meet it.

Motherhood isn't nappies, school uniforms, sports days and packed lunches.

Those are things motherhood does.

They aren't what motherhood is.

Motherhood is the instinct to nurture.

It is noticing when somebody needs kindness before they've found the courage to ask for it.

It is making another living thing feel safe.

It is believing in someone until they learn how to believe in themselves.

You can pour it into a baby.

You can pour it into a frightened rescue dog.

You can pour it into a teenager trying to find his place in the world.

One day you might pour it into somebody younger who simply needs to hear, “You'll get there. I remember what it felt like to be where you are.”

Love doesn't stop being love because its destination changes.

Perhaps love is a river.

A river doesn't reach a bend and mourn the field it has just left behind.

It keeps flowing.

The same water, travelling towards somewhere else that needs it.

It doesn't become less of a river because its direction changes.

And neither do we.

Maybe that's what growing older actually is.

Not becoming less needed.

Realising that all the love we've spent our lives carrying was never meant to stop flowing when one chapter ended.

And perhaps souls work like that too.

Perhaps they keep finding each other.

Not because they recognise faces.

Because they recognise home.

Maybe that's why some animals arrive and somehow feel as though they've always belonged.

Maybe that's why one little creature can enter a house and, before you know it, become part of its heartbeat.

Maybe our souls tie themselves to theirs for the years they're given to us.

And when those years are finished, maybe the tie doesn't break.

Maybe it simply stretches somewhere we can't follow yet.

I like that thought.

Because when I look backwards now, I can see them.

The cat who knew the child.

The little girl with four paws who knew my twenties.

The little boy with four paws who knew my thirties.

Different animals.

Different houses.

Different versions of me.

None of them ever met each other.

None of them knew they were taking turns.

But between them, they quietly walked beside an entire lifetime.

And perhaps that is why I remember them so clearly.

They didn't simply share my home.

They carried pieces of my years.

They knew versions of me that don't exist anymore.

And when they left, they became the doorway back to those people.

Sometimes when I miss an animal, I think I'm also missing the life that existed around them.

The house.

The age I was.

The person I hadn't become yet.

The people who were still there.

The things that hadn't happened.

Because photographs can show me what my pets looked like.

But only my heart remembers what life felt like when they were alive.

So no.

I don't think my life is measured only in years anymore.

I think it's measured in heartbeats.

Mine.

My son's.

And all those little hearts that beat beside ours for however long they were allowed.

And I like to believe that somewhere beyond everything we can explain, love keeps choosing another path whenever one closes.

That it doesn't disappear.

That souls don't forget the ones they were tied to.

That perhaps one day, in this lifetime or whatever might come after it, I won't need photographs or names to recognise a soul that once belonged beside mine.

Maybe it will come with tiny hands.

Maybe muddy paws.

Maybe kind eyes from across a room.

I don't know.

But I think the heart will.

And if one of those familiar little souls ever finds its way back to me, I think something inside me will recognise it before my mind has even had the chance to understand.

I'll look at them.

They'll look at me.

And I'll smile with that strange certainty only love seems to possess.

There you are.