I hadn't known it would be this hard to watch a sunrise without her. Waking to the glowing splendour of a dawn that she would never again be able to harken. My bedroom window peers out beyond the amber-tinged park, the grey fleeces of the herons made suddenly to look more radiant than any midday sun could do, a piece of knowledge she would never again be able to impart to her children, or her children's children. How often we had reclined over those green-kissed grasses. I miss the way she would pant beside me in the heat, and I would laugh at her droopy expressions.

The train approaches the station once again, the breaks screeching over the rails, then silence, before the monotonous drawl of the engine pushes it onwards again, leaving behind the companions who just wanted to put in one final farewell. How heartbreaking the forces of this world could be. How truly distant.

I drag a tear away from the corner of my eye, the moisture seemingly all too real because of the great flood welling up within my chest. I breathe against the window pane with great, violent heaves, as I try to abate my festering emotions. One more train rolls on by.

Quite abruptly, I hear my Mum calling with urgency from downstairs. I clamour down from the ledge and hurry over to the door. As I open it, a white ball of white fluff bumps against my leg with a muffled squeak. I smile weakly and bend down to pick him up, gazing into his watery eyes as he licks my nose, and yelps with an amiable, "Woof!"

So much like his poor mother, I muse. Just so alike.

I trundle down the stairs and place Numpkin beside his other siblings in their basket just by the kitchen door. I slump myself at the table and push aside the popping bowl of cereal to lean over the surface and sob into my trembling arms. It was just so tragic, that they would never know a mother.

I look up to see my own mum watching me with a pert expression on her face, eyebrow cocked and her mouth slightly drawn to the side. She says, "Matty, you know she's at the Vet, right? You'll see Moxxie when you come home from school. Good lord--" She rolls her eyes at me as I try to stem my sobbing gasps.

She turns her back on me and sighs. "The dog is going to be quite all right." She pauses. "There, there."