A man is walking down an empty road by himself. In his hands are nothing but a worn purple leash. He walks slowly but with a sense that he is familiar with where he is going. Occasionally he stops near a tree or bush and looks down at an invisible being before beckoning it onward.

The sun began to rise behind tall trees, and the middle-aged man soon came full circle on his daily route. He entered his home and closed the front door. Hanging the battered leash on a hook behind it, he walked into his small kitchen. There was a lonely silver dish lying on the cold tile floor. He picked it up and carried it to the white marble counter, where he poured dry rounded bits of food into it. Setting the now full bowl back on the floor, the man left through the kitchen doorway into the living room. He sat down in his large brown leather armchair. Before it was a stone fireplace, as cold and unmoving as the still and lifeless house. It contained no pictures of children or grandchildren, just of a man and a woman; young and happy. And the pictures of this couple remained happy throughout all of them, never aging or evolving. But that was the only sign of her; the pictures and her smile embedded in the man’s long memory. He sat alone in his dark living room reminiscing with a contented look on his face. He stared to the other side of the fireplace: another armchair was placed there. It looked as if no one had sat in it in years. He looked at it and it brought a smile to his face, just as the worn leash did when he looked upon it.

Two painful losses masked by the pleasant bliss of denial. The armchair which would never be sat in again, the laughter which would never ring though the halls of the house. The gentle tug on the leash suddenly gone, and the silver dish which would forever remain lonely.