It’s been a month. A hard month of grieving for ʻUkulele. I still can’t say her name without wai maka to da max. She was my special girl, the warm, purring presence who snuggled up next to me every night, the pōpoki who followed me everywhere, who lay down next to me while I was spinning, who came up to comfort me when I was upset or cried. Sixteen years with her went by like a flash, and now she is gone from my presence, but not from my heart.

I thought that it might help if I did a kind of tribute to her, but until now I haven’t even been able to get to an emotional point to be able to do it. But maybe now I’m ready.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a digital camera when ʻUkie was a baby, but I thought what I’d do is to post what photos I do have of her. I will cry while I do it I know. I miss her so much!

The first digital photo I have of her was taken in 2001, as she curled up under the Christmas tree. She used to love sleeping under it. In this photo, she was already six years old. How could the time fly by so fast?

See? I stay wai maka awreddy, just looking at dese two photos. My girl, being so kewt.

My girl loved to snuggle under the blankets. Lots of times I wouldn’t even make the bed so that she could curl up between the sheets with just her head poking out.

This was her special blanket. She slept on it all the time, and when I snapped this photo of her, I posted it on the Word-Filled Wednesday blog that I used to post on. This is one of my all-time favorite photos of my girl, taken in 2007. (Ho, big time wai maka now.)

2010. ʻUkie had a favorite pillow, too. It always sat ontop her special blankie. When I took this photo of her, it looked like she was smiling.

In this one she became the kitteh with the laser eyes.

ʻUkulele loved my knitted stuff too; here she is lying on the wabi sabi sheepie blankie that I knitted from yarn I spun that started out as fiber on our sheep.

I can hear her purring now; she had the loudest purr of any cat weʻve ever had. And oh, how I miss hearing that lullaby after I closed the light at night.

I thought I could do this all in one post… but itʻs too hard to see the monitor when my eyes are full of tears. I will write more again.