Forgotten photos are a powerful memory of a friend who’s left me

I still can’t get accustomed to taking midnight walks by myself.

For almost 10 years, Lucy was my constant companion for these meandering walks that let us explore our neighborhood and the downtown area of the suburb where I live.

When I’ve walked those streets for the last nine months, I’ve left the leash at home — and I left it at home tonight. I walk silently down streets where the loudest noises come from the crickets all around me. I hear no heavy panting. I hear no sound of a dog’s nails on the pavement. I see no eyes looking up to me as though to ask where we’re exploring next.

And it feels inconceivable that my friend Lucy is gone.

It’s not just me, though. Other people notice. About six weeks after Lucy died, a stranger who lives a few blocks away stopped me when I was walking earlier in the evening. I was taking a short walk along the route that Lucy had taken most often when I heard someone call out to me from a porch.

It was an older woman who I don’t know. She asked about my dog and I explained that I had lost Lucy six weeks before. She said she had been watching us walk for years and had missed us lately, so she feared something might be wrong.

Then she broke down and cried.

Right now, I’m stopped at a tiny bridge that was one of Lucy’s favorite spots to stop and rest along the way. As I type this on my iPhone, I almost expect her to be sitting on the concrete-block wall where I’ve photographed her so many times before.

But it’s just the crickets with me tonight.

I’m thinking right now about Lucy and our walks because of a couple of photos that I discovered last night. They weren’t really lost, but I had never looked at them closely, because I thought they had turned out to be too dark to use.

Most of the pictures I have of Lucy and me were taken with the selfie camera of my iPhone, so I didn’t really have any good pictures with a proper camera. So one night — about five years ago — I took my tripod and Sony A7IV out when we walked. I set it up and we had a little photo shoot.

When I got home and reviewed the pictures on my MacBook, they were far too dark and I didn’t think they would be usable. So I ignored those images and just figured I’d try again another night. But I never got around to doing that.

Late Tuesday night, I started wondering whether any of those images might be worth editing. Since I could never try again, I thought I’d take a look and see if I could make any of them look good enough to post.

There were two images that I could brighten enough without losing the details of the image. I worked with them quite a bit in Photoshop — and I discovered that I had two wonderful photos of her that had been buried and forgotten.

The photo above is one of those images. You can see the other one here.

I used to have a funny habit when I came home when I had left Lucy at the house. I still do this odd thing occasionally now, even though she’s not there to hear it.

When I walked through my front door, I almost always sang a ridiculous tune to Lucy. She always greeted me at the door — with her tail wagging hard against the door — and I would sing our own version of the first lines of the Scooby Do music.

I’d sing, “Lucy, Lucy Lou, how are you?” I had a couple of variations for the second line. It was ridiculous, but I liked to think she enjoyed it.

I’m back home after my walk now. When I came in the front door, I sang that ridiculous little song to her once more. I also talk to her on my walks sometimes, just as I used to do when she was with me.

These two photos I found last night — which are priceless to me now that I’ll never be able to make them again — have me thinking about her and wishing I could talk with her once more.

But there’s a part of me that has the ridiculous and irrational notion that she can still hear me anyway. I like to think that part of her will always be with me.