Tintin was hit by a car two days ago. We have been holding each other close since then. Leila cried a lot, from deep inside her tummy. We were most concerned for Scratchy, who used to play with Tintin so much and always follow him wherever he was, even though Tintin would not stop wrestling with him. So the first thing that Leila did was to hug Scratchy and let him nibble on her fingers.
We went out and told our friends and family and neighbors. Leila wanted to tell everybody, she said, but we stuck to those who knew and liked him. I have been thinking about how I could have made his life better and loved him better and hope to make sure I do for those who are still here. We made a picture album of who is in our hearts. It made us feel warm.
Today we spent the day in Ponte Nova. On the way we saw a horse in a field, and Leila said "he is on the grass, like Tintin (she knows that having no garden to bury him we laid him on the grass under a tree outside of town), except that the horse is not dead". She has been talking a lot about what Tintin used to do and what we used to enjoy about him, sometimes conjugating in the past, sometimes in the present.
When we got home and as I took Coline out of the car, she woke up and saw Scratchy on the stairs. She said "Scratchy pas mort" (Scratchy not dead), "Tintin mort" (Tintin dead), and we hugged.
