Dog Days

A few months ago, my family’s dog passed away while I was living across the country. Her name was Maggy. She was a golden retriever who loved licking empty butter containers, wrestling my dad, and rolling in the grass in the backyard. She was my mom’s best friend. 

Soon after, I started having dreams about Maggy. I dreamt my mom got Maggy stuffed, or that she sparked her back to life with jumper cables. I wrote them down every morning because I knew they said something about my mom and I- we were trying so hard to recreate an irreplicable companion, and our efforts failed. I started making comics of the dreams to capture that sentimentality- this keening hope that everything could be undone. But as I processed my emotions, the dreams happened less frequently. 

In the last dream, my mother makes a shrine to our dog by sprinkling beads, sequins, and foil stars across the backyard- Maggy’s spot. The dream strikes me because it shows my mother exactly as she is: wonderfully, earnestly sentimental. 

This comic was drawn in pencil and inked digitally using Procreate. For more sentimental comics, check out @librariankiddo on Instagram.